


Smoke On The Water, Part II

by spnredemption



Series: Redemption Road [36]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:11:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnredemption/pseuds/spnredemption
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Team Free Will travel to Brazil in order to search for an artifact that might help to defeat Cthulhu. Arriving at the Green Coast, the team finds itself clashing with Cthulhu cultists, and Dean has to deal with an unexpected case of jealousy when their local contact, former-priest-turned-hunter Jonas Harper, falls for Cas.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke On The Water, Part II

**Author's Note:**

> **Masterpost:** **[Supernatural: Redemption Road](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/1552.html)** (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)  
>  **Author:** [](http://murron.livejournal.com/profile)[**murron**](http://murron.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Characters/Pairing:** Dean/Castiel, Sam, OCs  
>  **Rating** : NC-17 for this part  
>   **Word Count** : ~25,000  
>  **Warnings** : language, graphic depictions of violence, sexuality  
>   **Betas** : [](http://nyoka.livejournal.com/profile)[**nyoka**](http://nyoka.livejournal.com/) and [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[**zatnikatel**](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Art:** Chapter banner by [](http://geckoholic.livejournal.com/profile)[**geckoholic**](http://geckoholic.livejournal.com/) ; digital drawings by [](http://kuma-la-la.livejournal.com/profile)[**kuma_la_la**](http://kuma-la-la.livejournal.com/) , which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/35484.html)** and **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/36201.html)** , digital drawings by [](http://usarechan.livejournal.com/profile)[**usarechan**](http://usarechan.livejournal.com/) , which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/35265.html)** and **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/36436.html)** , and digital drawings by [](http://ammo.livejournal.com/profile)[**ammo**](http://ammo.livejournal.com/) , which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/34851.html)** (art contains spoilers for the chapter).

_Paraty, Casa Verde Hostel_

The second morning of their stay in Paraty, Dean's mood was as black as the coffee in front of him. A headache throbbed behind his temples, and he had lost the patience to pretend he didn't know the source.

After Sam had talked to him, Dean had done his best to push any thoughts of Harper and Cas to the back of his brain, and he'd succeeded quite well, thank you very much. He'd fixed himself a sandwich for dinner, then joined Felix and a couple of others for a _Terminator_ double feature in the common room. He'd focused on dialogues he knew by heart and shut down the part of him that wanted to ask Sam for the name of the bar down the road. Sam had hit the hay around 11:30, but Dean had stuck to his place on the couch even when the ex-governator made way for a documentary on endangered wildlife in the Amazon rainforest. At 1:15, Dean had hit the sack with every intention to crash, but sleep hadn't come. Exhaustion, yes, resentment, also – but no sleep.

He'd refused to check his watch when he heard footsteps on the stairs outside. Jaw clenched, Dean had listened to the scrape of Harper's door only to flinch when the door to his own room opened as well.

Cas had come in on silent feet, his face a pale smudge in the moonlight. He'd undressed in the middle of the room with his usual lack of inhibition and slipped under the sheets in nothing but his boxer-briefs. Through the thin wall that separated their rooms, Dean heard Harper settle down by himself. All good and fine but had it put Dean at ease? Nope. He'd lain on his bed stiff as a board, his jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder he hadn't pulled something. When he'd finally crashed, his dreams had been troubled and confused.

All in all, he'd had better nights.

Yesterday's bad weather had moved on but the air still held a cool note, the smell of wet earth mixing with the scent of coffee inside the common room. Dean, Sam, and Castiel had gathered around one of the tables, sharing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Much to Dean's annoyance, Sam had also conjured up a bowl of fruit.

Sam's insistence on healthy food felt like a thinly veiled critique of Dean's eating habits on good days; today it just pissed Dean off. Cas was telling them about his night out with Harper, how they'd hit a bar and met with the author of _Christianity's First Footholds In The Americas_. Abel Bernades was in his seventies, a retired historian who'd held a position at the _Museu Imperial_ in Rio. According to Castiel, Bernades had invited them to survey the paper collection of the Historic Society he and some of his peers had founded in the sixties.

"You think it's worth a look?" Sam asked.

"It's a good lead," Castiel answered. He cut off a piece off bacon and speared it with his fork. "Abel said when he wrote his book he didn't go into the Jesuit murder case because what little he'd read about it sounded like exaggeration and made-up stories."

"That does sound promising," Sam agreed, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

Chewing on his bacon, Castiel threw Dean a look as if he wanted to hear his opinion as well.

"Yeah," Dean muttered. "Promising."

Castiel frowned but didn't comment on his sour tone. Dean ignored him, hoped he wasn't doing the mind-reading trick, and defiantly shoved the fresh tomatoes Sam had diced for their eggs to the side of his plate. It was easy to blame Cas for his restless night even though the angel hadn't really done anything to merit Dean's discontent. Fuck, even if Cas did want to play the field Dean shouldn't make a fuss. The decision to be exclusive was just another thing they'd never verbalized between the two of them. Dean had just assumed, but then, he should know what that made of him.

 _Give Cas space_. What a great idea.

Dean dug into his breakfast with a vengeance. Castiel kept side-eyeing him, and Dean half-expected his friend to call him out after all if Harper hadn't sailed into the common room and joined them.

"Mornin'," he said. The t-shirts he'd worn the last two days had been replaced by a light blue shirt with short sleeves, nothing fancy, but it sat good on him. He leaned on the backrest of Castiel's chair with one hand and shoved the other in the pocket of his pants.

"Good news?" Castiel asked.

"Good news," Harper confirmed. "Abel called and said he'll be at the Society's library in thirty minutes. I'm heading there now."

"Want us to come?" Sam asked.

"Nah, you lot finish your breakfast," Harper said. "It's just gonna be more Portuguese stuff anyway."

Dean scooped up his tomato-less eggs, satisfied by the prospect of Harperless time until Sam said, "Great, but shouldn't you take Cas at least? Two sets of eyes see more than one."

Harper shrugged and looked at Castiel. "You game?"

"Sure," Castiel said, finishing his bacon and setting his fork neatly by his plate. Through all this, Dean stared silently into his coffee, which was hot enough it would hurt like hell if he chugged it at Sam's face.

"See you in a bit," Castiel said, slinging his book-bag over his shoulder and following Harper outside.

Dean waited until the two men had left before he glowered at Sam. "Could you stop pimping Cas out?"

Sam shrugged and reached for a banana. "Didn't realize that's what I was doing."

"Bullshit."

At this Sam looked up, his gaze sharp and challenging. "Hey, Harper's an okay guy and Cas is newly human," he said. "Don't you think he wants to sow a few wild oats?"

"Jesus, Sam." Dean closed his eyes. He did not want to think about this.

"Besides, it's not like anyone else is rushing up to stake a claim," Sam added, again in that pointed tone that lacked all subtlety. He was pushing hard at Dean's boundaries, and he knew it, shoving Cas at Harper so Dean would take a stand. Fuck, but Sam should know better than to back Dean into a corner like this.

Anger churning in his stomach, Dean raised his coffee to his mouth and smoothed out his face. "No," he said. "I guess there isn't."

Sam snorted, his glare saying, _now who's bullshittin'?_.

_Paraty, Old Town_

A couple of hours later, Sam and Dean relocated to a coffee shop in the old town, a laid-back place offering ten different kinds of coffee and a WiFi hotspot. Overhead fans stirred the air inside the café and glossy posters advertised day trips up the Gold Trail or turtle watching cruises.

Sam sat in front of his laptop, and Dean had switched on his own, flipping through tabs on international news and mysterious disappearances. He'd also spread a world map on the table, the one he used to track Cthulhu activities. By now he'd peppered the international coastlines with so many Xs they looked like the hostel's spangled roof. If Dean had been looking for a pattern, he'd found it weeks ago, and it all pointed to one conclusion: everyone who lived within twenty miles of the ocean was fucked.

Dean nursed another coffee and went through an online article on tuna fish turned piranha. He scrolled down to the mugshots of two dead fishermen, skimming their stories and the recount of the authorities' confusion before he sat back in his chair with a grunt. Yeah, he recognized the signs now, he knew all the bad mojo was linked, but he still had no idea how to stop any of it.

Dean rubbed his fingers over his closed eyes and took another sip of his coffee. He'd taken a couple of aspirins for his headache, but the tension at the back of his neck wouldn't ease. He looked around the café, at the leather chairs, the large, open windows and the tourists walking by outside, and suddenly he missed the familiar confines of the Impala. Everything was strange here, unfamiliar, making Dean feel like a fish out of water. Whatever holiday vibe he'd picked up over the past two days had evaporated overnight.

Dean ran his thumbnail over a chink in his coffee mug and wondered when he'd lost his bearings. It wasn't just the shapeless threat that gathered under the sea that set him adrift lately – it was everything. He couldn't predict his own reactions anymore, couldn't figure out his moods or this thing he had with Cas. Yeah, mostly that.

Six months, Dean thought. Six months they'd been fooling around, having each other every which way and then some and now that the initial rush had passed, Dean looked back and marveled at how mindlessly they'd made the transition from being friends to being more. They'd gravitated toward each other, and Dean had never stopped, never thought any of it through before he'd reduced the distance between them inch by inch by inch until waking up naked in the same bed wasn't even a surprise anymore.

The thing was, even if Dean could go back he wouldn't change any of it. He was fine, more than fine, with Castiel's feelings for him and the way he felt about Cas. He had no problem with wanting Cas naked and close and sweaty, not despite him being a guy, but maybe because of it, and perhaps that was huge. But it wasn't the problem.

Was it?

So far Dean had neglected the massiveness of his decision, what it could mean for the future, and what it said about him, but he couldn't close his eyes anymore. Tim Janklow wouldn't be the last to comment on him and Castiel, and if it really bothered him, he needed to get a grip on it now. He reviewed his reaction to Tim's slur, his secretiveness at the farm and his decision not to sleep in the same bed with Cas at the hostel. Despite his protest to Sam, he had to admit that his knee-jerk reaction was to keep his _thing_ with Cas under wraps.

Sitting in the dim little café, Dean wondered if he struggled with this because it was a new situation or if part of him had fallen back into old patterns. Hiding was something he was good at, after all.

Dean swirled the coffee around in his mug. Last night, after he'd drifted off, he had dreamed of Marco. He hadn't done that in a while; actually he hadn't done that in more than ten years, not until the phantom of his friend appeared to him in the deserts of Ante-Purgatory. All morning he'd tried to let go of his nightmare but the images clung to him like molasses, viscous and sticky. Marco running down a dark, summer-hot street, Dean failing to climb the wire fence between them before a pack of vampires swarmed over the boy and ripped him apart. It hadn't happened like that at all – Marco had been ripped apart by a hydra – but it didn't take a genius to make the connection between his dream and the things Sam had told him about Harper.

Only Harper's history and Dean's had taken very different turns. Harper kept a picture of his dead friend in his wallet. Dean couldn't remember Marco's face properly outside of his dreams and the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him.

After Marco had died, Dean had gone through his days shell-shocked and distraught. It had gotten so that John had looked at Dean, not in a condemning way, but with an air of speculation on his face. It had been enough to make Dean uneasy. Worrying that his grief might be inappropriate, he'd hidden his attachment and shoved down the memory of Marco as far as it would go.

Little of that fell back on John, to be fair. High-school kids were an intolerant breed, especially in the conservative, backwater towns they often traveled, and Dean had heard enough homophobic slurs to paint his own picture of his life if his friendship with Marco had become common knowledge. Sam had always been more verbal about his disgust for being the new kid, but Dean hadn't enjoyed sticking out either. Yeah, he'd done a good job hiding his insecurities behind attitude and cockiness – or maybe that sort of behavior had been a dead giveaway, he didn't know. In any case he'd decided early on that the key to living as an outsider was to show no weakness, to present no target to the jocks and gossips, the well-meaning teachers and social workers.

He'd tucked Marco and his death far away from anyone who might look and as time passed, the whole episode had become distant and obscure even to him. Now Dean faced what he'd never allowed himself to dwell on before, that at sixteen he'd been in love with another boy, and if he'd allowed it, it might have shaped him into a different man.

Maybe he would have had less trouble trusting the good opinion some people seemed to have of him if he hadn't erased the first friend who cared for him from his memory. The realization stung, but it also relieved a years-old ache as though Dean had pulled a splinter from the depth of his heart.

Dean wrapped his hands around his mug and tried to remember the color of Marco's eyes. He still couldn't, but he recalled other things – the way it had felt to lean his shoulder against the other boy's, the rub of Marco's short sleeve and the warm, damp press of his arm against Dean's. He remembered the scuffed tips of Marco's sneakers as the two of them sat in the shadow of a stabled train-car with their feet against the rail.

He remembered that while they hung out he hadn't been afraid at all. The fear of discovery only came later, worming its way into the chinks that grief had torn into his armor.

One summer leading to Marco's blood slicking Dean's palms as Dean searched for a pulse he knew was no longer there. Somehow that ending had redefined their whole story, made it into something Dean was afraid to think of.

Dean let out a breath, raised his mug, and licked his lips before drinking. He began to see himself in a different light, understanding that his first experience with a person of the same sex had been tied up with secrecy and loss. He figured the first still influenced his behavior, but he had a growing suspicion the latest one really scared him.

That moment, he didn't doubt he'd get over his chicken-shit reflex to hide his relationship. The belief that nothing good ever lasted, though; that friends who fell hard for each other also lost each other, like him and Marco, like Ellie and Tara, like Harper and his friend…what if that was the reason behind his reluctance to see things through with Cas?

Missouri had said to let go a little, but she'd also told him to trust what he had. If Dean was honest, he'd neglected the last part of her advice, and he'd been careful not to ask himself why.

Pulse thumping hard Dean took a long, hard look at his course of action. Was he pushing Cas away?

All this time Dean had been so convinced that he'd kept his distance for Castiel's sake. But was that even true? Didn't he just turn his back and wall-in his heart because he feared laying it bare? Once burned, twice shy they said, and he'd been burned plenty. He'd lived with the scars from the fire that had swallowed his mother, the bonfire that had consumed his father's body, the pyre he'd refused to light for Sam until down in Hell he'd burned his own soul to a cinder so he didn't have to endure the pain of compassion anymore. He didn't want to feel like that again, didn't want to relive the agony of bereavement, the way it twisted his insides and sucked the color out of the world.

And yet, despite the lessons of his past, Castiel made him want to throw caution to the wind. For Cas he'd walk right over that fucking bed of hot embers, and a crazy part of him even insisted this time it wouldn't hurt. It was reckless. Stupid. And it felt better than anything ever had before.

Dean swallowed and thought of Marco again, of how his flickering spirit had said _he will be your last_. He thought of his surprise when Missouri had asked Cas about their plans, how for a moment he'd wanted so much it scared him. Wanting like that, being aware of his own happiness – it jinxed things, didn't it?

The question Cas had asked back in Florida came back to Dean then:

_Why do you fear what is between us more than you fear throwing yourself headfirst into an impossible battle?_

Dean had hedged his answer at the time but now he knew, he saw with uncompromising clarity that, yes, loving Castiel frightened him as much as walking into a war. More maybe. Question was, would he allow his fear to keep the upper hand?

Another good question: would Castiel still be there if Dean decided to man up?

Dean had put his cellphone on the table, but it hadn't buzzed once since he and Sam came here. Four hours. Had to be quite the research session if Cas and Harper hadn't finished yet. Picking up the phone, Dean scrolled down through his contacts to Castiel's name, but didn't dial. He almost laughed at himself. All these big thoughts about how much he'd changed and how important Cas was to him and he didn't even have the balls to call him and ask, hey man, how's it going? Any luck with the history books or are you busy making out with Kilty McScruff against the copier machine?

Dean tossed his cellphone on the table and felt as if he didn't much like himself or anyone at the moment. He peered into his mug and eyed the spatter of coffee dregs that clung to the empty bottom.

"I'm getting a refill," he told Sam. "You want some?"

"Nuh, 'm good," Sam muttered, his eyes scanning the laptop screen in front of him.

"Suit yourself," Dean said, and headed for the bar at the back of the café.

The kid who handed out the WLAN keys and sold the snacks took Dean's empty mug and busied himself with the coffee maker. Leaning on the counter, Dean looked around the room until his gaze caught on the doorway next to the bar. A guy stood behind the bead curtain that separated the hall to the restrooms from the café, his body stock still as he stared right at Dean. The strung-up beads hid most of his face, but Dean didn't think he'd seen him before. That didn't change the fact that the guy seemed to be very interested in him.

Dean straightened up, took a step toward the curtain and the guy jumped into motion, disappearing back into the hall so fast the beads rattled. On full alert now, Dean hurried after him, his hand feeling for the borrowed Beretta he'd shoved into his waistband. He slipped through the swaying curtain only to find the hallway empty before him.

"What the fuck," Dean muttered. Checking back over his shoulder, he eased his gun out from under his t-shirt and went to check the men's room. No dice. When he pushed the door to the ladies' room with the tip of his boot, the bead curtain rattled and Sam appeared at his shoulder. He stood between Dean and the doorway, screening Dean from the café's main room.

"What is it?" he asked.

Dean peered into the small restroom but again saw no trace of his stalker. The guy could've scrambled out the window at the back of the room but he must've been wicked quick to manage that. He'd also have had to squeeze a grown man's body through a window the size of a cat flap. With Sam guarding the entrance, Dean walked across the restroom and pushed at the window. He ran his fingertips over the window-frame and they came away smeared with a sticky, colorless liquid.

"Don't know yet," Dean answered. "But I don't think we're flying below radar anymore."

Sam and Dean were walking across the old town and heading toward the sea. The sky above hung low and gray, the clouds from yesterday had never moved on. The brothers walked downhill, past white-washed houses with doors of every color, passing crafts shops and small galleries, until they reached a cobbled alley filled ankle-deep with water.

"What the hell?" Dean cursed as he lifted his feet from the puddles.

"Flood water," Sam explained. "The water rises in the streets when the tide's up and the moon is full."

"Fantastic," Dean mumbled. The seawater was already seeping through the seams of his shoes, but Sam didn't seem to have much trouble, using his longer legs to hop from one dry spot to the next.

"They have to be connected," Sam said, coming back to their conversation. "The woman you spotted in the church and that guy today. Maybe Meg sent them?"

"They didn't seem like demons to me," Dean said. "They were just weird."

"They seem local?"

"I guess." They didn't say anything else, but Dean thought about the town folk they'd met back in Galveston, the way the darkness of the sea had gotten into them and warped the whole town. So far Paraty had seemed untouched by the Cthulhu blight but maybe that had been a wrong impression. Even the shiniest apple could be rotten at the core.

Leaving the alley, Sam and Dean came out on another church square. This one bordered right on the sea, offering a view of a scenic pier and the Atlantic ocean which had the color of lead that day. Seagulls drifted low above the bay and a couple of skiffs and smaller yachts lay at anchor beyond the seawall. The pier was completely flooded.

Dean and Sam crossed the lawn in front of the church, making for a parking lot the water hadn't swallowed yet. At their backs, the single belfry of the Capela De Santa Rita stood out like a warning finger against the sky.

Dean looked around, but it seemed they hadn't been followed. Didn't mean they'd lost their tail. "Should we smoke them out?" he asked.

Sam narrowed his eyes but shook his head. "No, we better focus on the dagger. We can deal with them if they interfere." He frowned, his gaze slipping to the grey ocean. "The sooner we move on from here, the better."

"Sense a disturbance in the force?" Dean teased.

"I don't know, man," Sam said. "I just have a feeling. You know, like something big is waiting around the corner?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "It has tentacles."

Sam snorted. He pushed back his hair, and Dean bit down on a comment. One day he'd buy a hair clip and hand it to Sam in a moment just like this. It would have to be a day when Sam's face didn't look so pinched with worry, though. Sam had always been good at keeping it together in a crisis, no shows of aggressiveness, no demolition of vintage cars. It took a lot until he cracked. Dean had always admired him for that. Sam had their Dad's strength in so many ways.

They reached the parking lot and stepped over a tangle of palm leaves that had been torn down during last night's rainstorm. "Let's hope the holy duo found something," Dean grumbled. Sam shot him a look but didn't say anything.

Castiel's call had come half an hour ago, telling them to meet him and Harper at this church. Dean looked up and as if on cue, Harper's jeep turned a corner and rolled toward them. With an effort, Dean managed not to cross his arms in front of his chest.

The jeep came to a halt and Castiel jumped out first, his book bag still slung over his shoulder and his dark hair flopping down into his forehead. There was a tight set to his mouth, but then he looked like he'd bit into a lemon ninety percent of the time. As he walked over to Sam and Dean, Harper caught up easily and matched Castiel's stride. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, probably because he'd spent half the day in a stuffy room full of books.

 _Probably_ , Dean thought.

"So?" Sam asked when Harper and Castiel had reached them. "What's the scoop?"

"Two things," Harper said. "One, our good shepherd didn't go far after he killed his cultist friend."

Dean listened to him but looked at Cas, unable to keep the irritation off his face. Cas returned his gaze and frowned as if he wanted to ask Dean what was wrong. Dean swallowed and forced himself to turn to Harper.

"Two," Harper continued, "the bad sheep has been buried in consecrated ground after all."

"Abel showed us the journal of a secretary who served the town's governor in 1657," Castiel explained. "He documented the events after the missionary smashed the Cthulhu cult."

"Unfortunately the fellow had a talent for exaggeration," Harper added. "He described the cult's ascent like a biblical plague with legions of frogs rising from the ocean, and cast Father Nunes in the role of Moses. Apparently he parted the wave of monsters with his staff and retreated to Mount Sinai after he was done."

"Abel thinks its all fabrication," Castiel concluded, and Harper smiled at him. Watching the smile and the honest fondness in Harper's gaze, Dean felt a stab to his chest that wasn't anger but something else entirely.

"Mount Sinai," Sam repeated. "One of the mountains at the back of town?"

Castiel nodded. "We think so. Harper compared a few maps of the local area from different centuries, and it seems there's a village up the old Gold Trail, which was founded right around the time Nunes left Paraty."

"The journal also says Nunes took the blade of the devil with him," Harper said and scratched at the small of his back.

" _Blade_ ," Dean said. "As in _sword_?"

"Maybe."

"But didn't that other journal say the sword was buried with the cult leader?" Sam asked.

"Yes," Harper agreed. "We have two conflicting accounts, but we also have two clues where to look now."

"The secretary writes that the cult leader has been buried 'under the roof of the watchful Lord'," Castiel said. Maybe Dean was the only one who noticed the hard note in his voice when he talked about God, just as he'd noticed Sam flinch when Harper mentioned the devil. "So there's a good chance the sword is either interred under a church—"

"—or stashed away in the mountain village," Sam finished. "That's a start."

Dean shoved his hands into his pockets. "So where to we begin? Search the churches or the village?"

"I say we split up again," Harper suggested. "We could cover more ground that way."

 _Yeah I bet you'd like that_ , Dean thought, but the spite he'd felt earlier was still gone. Harper obviously liked Castiel, and Dean could hardly blame him for that. If he was thinking rationally, he also knew that Cas wouldn't up and elope with the ex-priest. He was probably just enjoying the chance to talk faith with someone who actually had some. And if Dean didn't want Cas to spend the rest of the day in a car with Harper, he just had to open his mouth. Now was the time.

While Harper explained that the drive to the village would take about half an hour and Sam tried to remember which of Paraty's churches was the oldest, Dean fisted his hands and searched for the right words. He wouldn't even have to stage a big coming out, he just had to suggest that Sam team up with Harper and Cas should stick with him.

He'd opened the distance, now he couldn't close it.

Dean had his jaw clenched tight enough he wouldn't be surprised to hear his teeth crack. He was still no closer to getting the damn words out when Cas turned to Harper. "All right," he said. "Sam can go with you. Dean and I will have a look at the churches."

The wave of relief that swept through Dean was pitifully strong. He did his best not to show his emotion on his face and at this at least he succeeded.

Harper's gaze hung on Castiel's two or three seconds too long, and Dean imagined he caught a glimpse of regret there. The Scot took it in stride, though. "Yeah, all right," he said. "Sam, you're okay to ride with me?"

"Sure," Sam answered. He didn't look at Dean, which went a long way to redeeming him for his earlier meddling.

Castiel rooted through his book bag and handed Sam his journal, showing him a couple of earmarked pages where he'd written down his translations of the secretary's journal. He seemed oblivious to Harper's disappointment, which made Dean wonder if Cas even knew that Harper had a crush on him.

"We'll call if we find something," Castiel told Sam.

"Just make sure you watch your back," Sam said. "Someone ogled us earlier today."

Castiel's brows went up. "Demon?"

Sam shot Dean a look, and Dean shrugged. "I don't think so."

"Better expect trouble no matter who they are," Harper said, and turned to Dean. "You need some extra ammo?"

Dean rolled his shoulder and shook off the lockdown of his tongue. Time to act like a professional. "Wouldn't hurt."

Harper nodded and opened the back of his jeep, lifting the lid of the hidden weapons case. Sam picked up a Glock, and Dean chose a decent hunting knife to go with the gun he already carried. Castiel didn't go near the case.

"What about you?" Dean asked, his hand already reaching for another knife he thought might suit Cas. Before he could suggest the weapon, though, Cas turned around. He lifted the hem of his t-shirt and showed Dean a saber similar to his angel sword with a smooth wooden handle and a fourteen-inch, recurved blade. It sat snug in the holster Dean had made for Cas a couple of months ago: a simple cross-back-scabbard with a sheath sitting beneath Castiel's shoulderblade so that he could reach the sword's hilt with one quick grab beneath his shirt.

Dean hadn't even known Cas had brought the scabbard along.

"I'm good," Castiel said, letting his t-shirt fall back into place.

Harper snatched a magazine from the case and shoved it into his backpocket before he clapped Cas on the shoulder. "Good luck."

"You too," Castiel said, and Dean's hand twitched around the knife handle.

 _Professional_ , he reminded himself.

As Harper walked to the front of the car, Sam took his time loading the Glock. "You going to be okay?" he asked Dean.

Dean sheathed his knife and shot a look at Cas. He'd already moved in the direction of the church, the easy set of his shoulders so impervious to Dean's jealousy vibes that Dean didn't know if he should be glad or clutch his head in his hands.

"We'll manage." The 'we' slipped out before he realized Sam might have just asked if Dean would be okay to handle the grave search. Dean bit his lip and felt his face heat up, side-eying Sam to check if he'd caught his slip.

Of course he had.

Sam huffed out a laugh and shut the jeep's trunk. "Take care, man."

"You too," Dean mumbled. He watched Sam climb into the jeep before he turned around.

Castiel waited by the edge of the church lawn, one hand in his pocket, the other closed around the strap of his book bag. Dean let out a breath and joined him. He knew he should talk about Harper but decided to save it for later. If Cas didn't know what was up, Dean would have to explain why he'd planned to kick Harper into the Atlantic and that would be awkward as hell. No, he'd figure out a smooth way to bring up the monogamy question and settle it once and for all once the job was done. For now it was enough that Harper drove the other way.

"Let's go to work, huh?" Dean said, ready to concentrate on the grave search.

He should've known he couldn't catch a break.

Castiel slowly turned his head and Dean flinched. Now that Harper and Sam had left, the angel's expression had switched from neutral to full-on stormy. Dean knew then that Cas understood exactly what was going on, and that he was pissed at Dean for acting like an ass.

"Yes," Cas said. "Let's."

 _Yep_ , Dean thought. So much for avoiding awkward.

Choosing the obvious starting point, Dean and Castiel headed for the church in front of them. As they crossed the lawn, Dean fixed his eyes on the church and ground his teeth at the charged silence between him and Cas. If he'd thought talking about Harper to a clueless Cas would be hard, he'd underestimated the challenge of admitting his jealousy to a Cas bristling with indignation. But then, Castiel didn't come out and say what bugged him either so they were unified in their refusal to talk about shit at least.

"So. You had a good research session?" Dean asked at length, unable to keep his mouth shut.

"It was fairly successful."

"Had to be if it took you four hours."

Castiel shot him a poisonous look, but Dean reached the church's entry before he could respond. Dean almost hoped the town stalkers would ambush them inside just so he'd be able to blow off some steam.

Opening the door of the church, Dean expected a shaded narthex and rows of wooden benches. Instead, he stepped into a brightly-lit anteroom with a desk and glossy pictures of the church decorating the walls. It took Dean a second to make sense of what he saw, and then he remembered Sam telling him the _Capela De Santa Rita_ had been turned into a museum.

"This could be problematic," Castiel said softly. Dean opened his mouth to shoot off a 'no shit Sherlock' when a group of tourists bundled into the room and piled through the door that led into the church's nave.

"How are we going to search the church with all those civilians clogging up the place?" Dean muttered, and Cas frowned.

"Wait here." He went over to the reception desk and exchanged a few Portuguese words with the woman behind it before he returned.

"The museum closes at five," Castiel said.

Dean checked his watch. "One hour. We can tick off another church until then."

"If you say so," Castiel said, his voice indifferent again. Dean had the sudden urge to push him into the nearest wall, and he took a quick step in Castiel's direction before he reined himself in. What the fuck was wrong with him? Realizing he'd clenched his fist, Dean forced his fingers to relax.

Suddenly their whole spat seemed staged and ridiculous to Dean, the way he needled Cas, the way Cas clammed up. Sam was right, they were acting like butt-hurt teenagers.

It was all too reminiscent of the way they'd set each other off before they'd visited Missouri, both of them burning on short fuses and no way to defuse them. Dean had hoped that hitting pause would carry them past the friction but no dice. Time to change tactics.

"Cas," Dean began, but when the angel met his gaze, direct and challenging, he lost his courage again. Disappointment flickering across his face, Castiel shook his head and snatched an info flyer from a nearby basket.

"Let's get the job done," he said, and headed for the exit.

_The Haven, São Colina_

Sam and Harper drove out of Paraty, following a single-lane road up into the hills. As soon as they left the last townhouses behind, the forest reached higher and the trees stood closer. Rhododendron and stumped palm trees choked the roadside and big-leaved creepers climbed up the tree giants. The jeep's windows were down, and the mushroomy smell of the rainforest mingled with the smoke from Harper's cigarette.

Sam leafed through Castiel's journal, reading up on the village they were headed to. As he flipped back and forth between the pages, a beer coaster fell out that had unfamiliar handwriting on it. Could only be Harper's, Sam mused, and wouldn't Dean love that.

The idea of Cas and Harper comparing notes in some secluded bar did smack of potential, although Sam had no idea how far Cas would take whatever it was they had going. If they had anything going. He shot a sidelong look at the Scot, stubbled beard, smoke in one corner of his mouth, a few scars and a rough-around-the-edges air to him. Seemed Cas had a type. Or maybe certain types were attracted to Cas.

It still mystified Sam that Dean hadn't caught on right away. He was so keen on that stuff otherwise, pointing out to Sam who 'sniffed after who' in his trademark tactful way. But Sam began to understand that when it came to Cas the laws of Deanology didn't apply. For example, he'd expected Dean to joke about the situation, a priest and an angel walk into a bar, that sort of thing. Never in a million years had Sam thought Dean would dummy up and mind quite so much.

Turning the coaster between his fingers, Sam couldn't help wondering if Dean and Cas were still giving each other the silent treatment. His brother and his angel. For lack of a better word.

"There we go," Harper said.

Sam closed Castiel's journal and looked up at the outskirts of São Colina. According to Abel Bernades, there had been an effort to beautify the village some two years ago. With Paraty growing into a tourist magnet, the municipality had hoped to get another historical site out of the settlement, but for some reason or other the renovation efforts never took off. Tourists didn't make the trip up into that particular bit of forest and money that had been promised for the repair of the road went elsewhere.

To Sam, it seemed as if the rainforest was slowly reclaiming the village. Weeds stood high in the small yards, creepers coiled over the slanting telephone poles. A good many of the houses were boarded up, and the ditches that had been dug for new water pipes looked like they'd been deserted for months. Brown water dried in the potholes of the unsealed village road.

"Welcome to the 'holy hill'," Harper commented.

"Where did you want to look?" Sam asked.

"Bernades said to check out _O Porto_ ," Harper said.

"'The Haven'," Sam translated, remembering a passage from Castiel's journal. "That's the ex-chapel?"

"First building of the village," Harper agreed. "Just a one room _capela_ , and it's been converted into a family home around 18-something-or-other."

"Cas writes that the family that owns it has an antique collection? Relics from when the chapel was in use?"

"That's the rumor," Harper said. "Although no one's seen the pieces in a dog's age." He stubbed out his cigarette on the window and dropped it in the dashboard's ashtray. "House has been in the possession of the Almeidas for several generations, but they're pretty reclusive. One of the daughters made a splash once, running away with a couple of musicians in the 1960s. Bernades says it's only the patriarch up there now, holing up like an old iguana. Abel tried to arrange a meeting when he wrote his book, but he never got hold of the man."

"Think he'll see us?" Sam asked.

"I think we can persuade him," Harper smiled and slowed the jeep. "Hold on a bit."

He stopped the jeep next to two women who were chatting by the side of the road. Harper leaned out of the jeep's window, threw out a friendly greeting, and talked to them in Portuguese. Soon the three of them seemed to be exchanging directions, and the women pointed up the hill.

Harper thanked them, but before he could drive off, one of the women tapped his arm and asked a question. Harper frowned and said, "Sim, claro." The woman nodded, said something else and stepped away from the jeep.

"What was that about?" Sam asked as Harper drove away from the women.

"Dunno, really," Harper said. "She asked if I was a Christian man."

"And when you said you were?"

Harper shot Sam a look. "She said, 'Don't you forget it'."

The road up to the Haven was even worse than the main one up into the village. In some places the single lane narrowed so much, the leaves of the roadside bushes slapped against the jeep's side, and Sam had to close his window.

Just when it seemed the bush would swallow them whole, the road suddenly opened and the jeep rolled out onto a clearing. The Haven stood on the far side, a flat, square house with a wrap-around porch. There was no sign of a garage or a car, and in fact the place jumped immediately to the number one spot on Sam's houses-most-likely-to-be-haunted list. There was something menacing about the gray, blind windows and the way the porch's roof sagged over the front door.

"Charming." Harper peered out the windshield and joked, "Maybe we should cross ourselves."

"I'm not the religious type," Sam said. He pulled the Glock from the glove department and stuffed it into the back of his pants.

Harper shot him a look, amused. "That works too."

They walked up to the front of the house, watching the windows for movement. No one showed. In absence of a bell, Harper knocked on the door, but that had no effect either.

"Think the master of the house is out?" Harper asked.

Sam shrugged. "Food shopping perhaps," he suggested. There had been tire-tracks in the clearing after all.

"Don't know about you, but I'm no good at waiting," Harper said. He tried the door handle, and the door opened easily. "Will you look at that."

"Looks like they've been expecting us." Sam smirked. A disregard for private property seemed to be ingrained in every hunter, no matter their background. Dean always said the best people in the business had no qualms and good instincts. Instincts that told you, for example, when a place was rotten.

The second Sam stepped over the threshold, he knew the Haven was corrupted to the core. Floorboards creaked under his feet as he moved into the house. The sun filtered through finely-meshed curtains, the green thread dimming the light and giving the rooms an underwater feel. Even more disconcerting, the place was quiet as a grave. No tick of a clock, no fridge humming. It even smelled vaguely crypt-like, the air redolent with mold and dust.

Sam followed Harper into the living room, stepping over stacks of yellowed newspapers. Black-and-white photographs lined the walls, but the pictures had paled into obscurity. If the elder Almeida really did collect old items, he didn't take good care of them.

At the far side of the room, Harper let out a low whistle. He stood in front of a doorway that let out onto the back porch, brushing a tattered curtain to the side.

"Found something?" Sam asked and joined him.

"A fast way to break your neck," Harper said, and pointed at the porch.

Sam peered outside. The wicker mesh in the porch's door had been torn and through the gaps, Sam saw the sheer drop beyond the house's back. The house must have been built on the edge of a cliff so the rotten floorboards of the porch reached out over a deep green sea of wilderness. The top of palm trees swayed below the porch instead of above.

"This place gives me the willies," Harper said. "You reckon someone lives here?"

"I saw last week's newspapers on the table," Sam said, and Harper shook his head.

"Jesus. Shall I look at the other rooms?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I'll see if I dig up anything here."

Harper cast his gaze over the clutter and shook his head again. "Good luck."

He was halfway out the living room when Sam stopped him. "Hey, Harper. Do you smell something?"

Harper sniffed. "Besides the mothballs?"

"Nah, something else," Sam frowned. There was a stench, something faint lying under the smell of decomposing cushions. "I don't know. Something fishy?"

Harper sniffed again. "I don't think so."

Sam clucked his tongue. "I could be wrong."

"Maybe," Harper said. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if something crawled into this mess and died. Watch out for holes in the floor," he added. "I think there's a cellar underneath."

Sam nodded absently, his hands already sorting through the junk on the couch. Dog-eared paperbacks from the fifties, candle stubs, a bald doll, and other derelict toys. Sam held up a stuffed doggy that missed both eyes and grimaced. Harper was right. Who'd want to live in this scrap-heap?

He dropped the dog and rubbed at his nose. Seriously, what was that smell? Was it coming from the walls?

Sam moved around the table, would have passed it by too if he hadn't glimpsed a corner of something glossy. He stopped, raised a sheaf of newspaper and looked at a picture of himself.

For a few seconds, Sam simply stared. The snapshot was recent, showing his profile among the crowd inside Galeão International Airport. Feeling as if a large hand closed into a fist around his heart, Sam picked up the print and discovered other pictures, one of Dean, one of Cas, one of Dean and Cas together, and then another of the three of them buying paella at the pier in Paraty.

  


They'd been made the second they'd touched down in Brazil. The watchers in the town, Dean's shadow in the church and the internet café. Someone sent them, someone put them on their tail, and it wasn't Meg – it wasn't anyone they'd met yet. Watching them from the Haven in a house rank with the smell of slick and sea.

Sam whipped out his phone before he'd even stopped to think about it. He punched the speed dial for Dean's number, but there was no reception bar on his phone and the call wouldn't go through.

"Dammit," Sam cursed, and snapped his phone shut. His eyes flew up, straight to the door. They needed to get out of here _stat_. He had to get a warning out to Dean, because if the other side had surveillance on them they had a plan. If they hadn't attacked yet, chances were they'd been waiting for the right opportunity. Like the four of them splitting up.

Sam routed through the newspapers, pushed them off the table but found no other pictures, no other clues. Damn, they should have been on red alert but Sam had told Dean, he'd told him not to mind their stalkers, that they'd be prepared to deal with them when the time came.

"Sam!" Harper's voice called out and Sam's fingers clenched into the pictures. "Sam. Hey, Sam, you need to see this."

From the sound of it, Harper had found the cellar.

_Capela De Santa Rita, Paraty_

By the time Castiel and Dean made their way back to the _Capela De Santa Rita_ , the clouds over their heads had darkened to the color of slate. With five o'clock come and gone the church was closed, so Dean picked the lock and let them in.

They'd already searched one of the smaller churches without success. Dean didn't have much hope for this one either. There was no mention of in-church graves in the flyer Cas had taken, and surely if there had been any archeological finds they would've been included in the museum. But since the _Capela_ was the oldest church in town they didn't want to rule it out without looking.

Light fell into the church through three high windows inside the apse. The nave had been cleared of pews, and display cases lined the aisles. A row of tables led straight to the altar, showing a series of old documents under thick panes of glass.

Dean and Cas went through the church back to front, checking the slabs of stone that covered the floor because in most churches, VIPs had been interred beneath the aisles. Nothing came up though.

The light outside grew weaker but there was still enough to illuminate the exhibits. Dean stood in front of a glass case, looking at a skeleton swathed in heavy red brocade studded over and over with pearls. The bones belonged to a local saint, or so Dean deciphered from the plaque. Dean looked at the skull grinning from its half-rotted finery, and decided that people were strange. Who'd want to preserve this freak show and much less put it behind glass? The bones made his fingers itch for salt.

"Dean," Castiel called from across the church.

Rubbing at the nape of his neck, Dean walked over to the opposite aisle. Cas was standing at a narrow doorway in the church wall, peering through the grids of an iron gate.

"Found something?" Dean asked, and kneaded his fingertips into the hollow of his shoulder. The aspirin was wearing off, and his headache had returned, most noticeable by the sharp pain behind his eye and the tension in his nape. Maybe it was the weather; the atmosphere seemed braced for a thunderstorm that never came. Dean rolled his shoulder and dropped his hand, hoping it would rain sooner rather than later.

He'd just leaned into the gate to catch a glimpse of the other side when Castiel's hand settled on the back of his neck. Dean froze, his breath catching at the unexpected touch. He squared his shoulders at first but as the warmth of Castiel's palm bled into his skin, Dean closed his eyes and the tension melted from his body. God, it felt so damn good. Exhaling a long breath, Dean leaned back into Castiel's touch and Cas stroked his thumb over the soft spot beneath Dean's ear. By the time Cas let him go, Dean's headache had disappeared.

Shooting Castiel a look from the corner of his eye, Dean tried to determine if they'd made peace. Cas avoided his gaze, but at least he didn't look he wanted to smite Dean's ass anymore. Dean touched his fingertips to his nape, feeling for the fading warmth the angel's touch had left behind.

"I think so," Castiel answered Dean's earlier question, and he pointed at a plaque next to the gate.

"Catacumbas," Dean read. "Catacombs?"

"Yes," Castiel affirmed. "They're closed off to visitors."

Dean let out a low whistle. "Yahtzee." A few seconds later he'd opened the door, and they stepped over into a low, shadowed room.

The air smelled different in there, damp and coppery, like wet clay. The floor was soft and bumpy underfoot with flagstones buried under trampled earth. The only light came from a slitted window below the roof. Cas pulled a flashlight from his bag and switched it on.

"There," he said, and trained the light beam on a circular grate in the ground.

Dean groaned. "You're kidding me."

"The crypt must be underground."

"Well, shit."

At this, Cas actually smiled. "Did you think we'd have it easy?"

"Would've been a nice change," Dean grunted. He went down on one knee and fitted his lock pick into the grate's padlock.

"In some churches, this would be called a demon's hole," Cas supplied.

"Very creative," Dean said, and shifted his tools around the rusted lock. "Come on."

Cas kept the light steady on the lock to help him. "You know there'll be rats down there," Dean said, thinking of the one part in the Indiana Jones movies he really hated. "Furry suckers big as dogs."

"I don't think rats can grow to that size," Cas offered.

"That's where you're wrong," Dean said grimly. The lock finally clicked, and Dean pulled it off the latch before he took a hold of the grate with both hands. Castiel joined him, and together they lifted the lid off the hole and settled it on the ground.

"I know this guy," Dean said as they straightened up. "Exterminator. Works the sewers in New York and he says—"

"Shh."

When Cas broke him off, Dean immediately went still. He searched Castiel's face, caught the subtle nod toward the doorway and turned his head. Dean didn't see anything, but when he listened closely he could hear a soft scraping sound from within the church.

"Night guard?" Dean whispered, but Cas shook his head. "Didn't think so."

The noises stopped, but Dean didn't doubt the church was no longer empty. He shoved his picklock set into his back pocket and Castiel let his book bag slide slowly to the ground.

"You know what I've been wondering?" Dean asked.

Castiel kept his eyes on the doorway, his whole body tensed and ready to move. "What?"

"What happened to the cultists after their leader bit the dust," Dean said, and eased the gun from his waistband. "Did they just up and leave?"

"I don't believe they did," Cas answered.

Dean raised his gun. "Nope, me neither."

One more second of silence, then the first man burst through the doorway. Dean's bullet caught him right in the chest and flung him back but the folk at his heels only shoved him down and vaulted over his body; two of them, then three, then five. Dean caught another guy in the shoulder, but the woman next to him moved supernaturally quick, dodging Dean's third shot and flying for his throat with her hands raised like claws. It was the big-footed lady from the other church, her eyes bulging even wider than Dean remembered. Dean sidestepped her, ducked beneath the swing of a tire iron, but something else hit his shoulder hard enough he dropped the gun. He pulled his knife out even as the Beretta fell, and then deflected the stab of a butcher's knife.

It was chaos, the room filling with the shuffle of feet and the haze of gun smoke. Dean caught one glimpse of the young girl wielding the knife, then the guy with the tire iron was back and aiming for Dean's head again. Dean stumbled back, swept around and managed to swipe his knife across the man's face, splitting nose and cheek. Unbelievably, the guy kept coming, the tire iron sweeping so close past Dean's throat, Dean felt the rush of air against his skin. Dean swiveled on his heel, barely escaping the backward swing of the iron and falling right onto the girl's knife.

The blade slid into the soft flesh beside Dean's navel and for a moment, time stopped. For the first time, Dean saw the girl's face clearly, taking in her quicksilver eyes that shone even in the gloom and the growths along her jaw. Dangling bits of skin, like the whiskers of a catfish. She looked at him steadily while shoving the knife in to the hilt. Dean gasped out a breath and then pain exploded, a sharp flare of agony that seemed to sear him in half.

The tire-iron guy crashed to the ground with a heavy thud, but Dean barely noticed.

"Dean!"

Someone called his name, and Dean turned his head, saw Cas struggling with three attackers on the far side on the room. Cas was using his sword, blocking blows and cutting throats so smoothly it almost looked like he was dancing, like he was training up in Bobby's attic.

Dean dropped his blade, the handle slipping from his fingers. Pain. Pain like a white hot spike drilling through his belly. Using his fingertips, Dean touched the tip of the knife protruding at his back, just above his hip. He tried to breathe in but his lungs wouldn't draw any air. Dimly, he felt the girl pull out her knife and plant her hand against his chest. Black dots swirled before Dean's eyes when she shoved and pushed him back-first into the demon's hole.

_The Haven_

Sam rushed down the stairs of the Haven's cellar with the surveillance pictures of Dean, Cas, and himself clutched in his fist. Harper had switched on the light, and Sam saw him standing down there, the back of his legs first, then the rest of him.

"Harper," Sam called. "Come on, man, we need to—" But he forgot what he wanted to say even as the words left his mouth.

One foot on the last step of the stairs, Sam stared into the Haven's cellar, at the cavernous walls, the mummified head and torso that had been impaled on a stake, and the altar.

Turned out the house was still used for services after all.

"Jesus Christ," Sam murmured. He edged into the room, gaze frozen on the halved corpse that seemed to grow from the cellar's floor. The flesh had browned and hardened ages ago, nothing but petrified sinew coating the bones now, but the face still had an expression, the blind sockets opened wide and the mouth gaped in a scream. A wooden spike had been driven through the dead man's head and nailed him vertical to the ground.

At least Sam hoped he'd been dead when they had done this.

Jesus.

He stepped around the mummy, taking in the hollowed ribs and the cross that hung around his neck. Out of the blue, the village woman's question came back to him.

_Are you a Christian man?_

Harper waited in front of the altar, his shoulders tense and his hands balled into fists.

"Will you look at that," he murmured as Sam joined him.

Pulse jumping on the side of his throat, Sam stared at the layers of wax that covered the altar's top and the effigy that took pride of place. Words could never describe the sculpture's ugliness, nor could they explain the horror Sam felt as he looked at it. It was a likeness of Cthulhu, and the crouched thing looked something like the pictures in the books and nothing like them at all. The stone had been handled badly, the creature's limbs chiseled into crooked and sharp relief. The head writhed with tentacles so Sam wasn't sure if there were eyes or not but he thought there were. Some type of coarse matter coated the stone – it looked like yellow lichen or melted wax or a little bit like bile, too.

Sam stared at the effigy, trying to make sense of the creature's proportions, where the limbs ended, where they began, until he realized he'd been staring for a minute or more. Startled, Sam shook himself out of his stupor and grasped Harper's shoulder.

"Harper," Sam urged. "Hey, snap out of it."

At Sam's words, a shiver ran through Harper. He blinked and turned away from the effigy, his eyes wide and scared.

"God," he croaked. "God. That's what we're up against?" His voice was almost small as he asked it.

Sam, still shaken himself, squeezed Harper's shoulder.

"We need to leave," Sam said, and Harper nodded.

"Yes," Harper agreed, took a hold of Sam's arm and gave it a squeeze in turn. "God, yes we need – wait!"

He reached for the altar, and Sam tensed, prepared to haul Harper back if he should fall under the effigy's spell again. But Harper didn't look at the sculpture of the Great Old One anymore. Instead, he pried something from the layers of hard wax on the altar's top.

"There," Harper said, and held up an ancient-looking sword. Sam hadn't even noticed it was there, he'd been that entranced. Now he took the sword from Harper's hand and ran his thumb over what resembled the Hastur and Elder sigils, carved on its hilt.

"That's the one, isn't it?" Harper asked.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Yeah, I think it is." He carefully ran his thumb over the sword. Despite the tarnish that clouded the blade, the edge was still sharp. Sam turned the sword over and frowned at a third sigil, carved into the blade just beneath the cross-guard. The signs of Hastur and the Elder Gods looked like crude brands, but this other symbol was filigree and elegant, the lines as smooth as if they'd been cut into the metal with a hair-fine laser. It looked familiar, like a cursive 'E'. Sam wanted to question Harper about it, but at that moment the whiff of old fish that wafted into the cellar was so strong, it made Sam pause.

Harper flinched. "Sam, what—" he began, but Sam had already whipped around. Upstairs, the floorboards creaked, then the cellar steps groaned and a shadow fell down the staircase. The stench increased, reminding Sam of sewage and algae drying in the sun. The shadow fanned out on the cellar's ground, grew bigger and fell over the mummified half-of-a-corpse. Sam listened to the heavy treads coming closer until finally he caught his first glimpse of the owner of the house.

_Capela De Santa Rita_

Dean lay on the flooded ground of the crypt, the water lapping against his cheek. He stared up at the hole in the ceiling, feeling warm blood seep from the open wound in his lower belly and mingle with the water that soaked his clothes. His sight blurred, a film of gray settling over his vision. At one point there was a loud splash, and Dean's eyes flew open. He saw the hole again, watched the grate lower over the opening, sealing it shut.

More splashes, water rocking against his side, then someone grabbed his arm and hauled him up. The pain in his abdomen had begun to ebb away, but now it blazed up again, bright and excruciating. Dean cried out, then the person at his side pressed something like a branding iron against his belly-wound and Dean knew no more.

The sound of water woke him up, the gentle slap of the waves echoing in the cavern. Opening his eyes, Dean looked at a rough wall glaring with white light. He lifted his hand and watched his shadow shiver over the sand-colored stone. Where did the light come from?

Dean blinked and realized he lay on his back, no longer in the water, but on a dry slab of stone. Castiel's flashlight lay in the space between Dean and the wall, its beam casting a wide circle.

Cas knelt beside Dean, half in and half out of the light. He'd stripped to the waist, and a shallow cut showed on his left shoulder. Dean squinted down his own body and saw Castiel's hands pressing the bloodied remnants of his t-shirt against Dean's belly.

"Damn," Dean whispered. He raised his head, but even that small movement sparked a flare of pain in his midriff. Dean winced and eased his hand under the small of his back. He searched for the spot where the knife's tip had come out but found only smooth skin. His belly seemed to be another matter though.

"I healed as much as I could," Castiel murmured. "But I couldn't fix all of it."

Dean craned his head, and Cas lifted his makeshift compress a little, revealing a ragged, seeping gash halfway between Dean's hipbone and his navel. Not a pretty sight. The girl must have twisted the knife as she pulled it out.

"I think I repaired most of the internal damage," Castiel went on. "Otherwise—"

"Otherwise I wouldn't be breathing," Dean finished. "Thanks, Cas."

Dean gritted his teeth and pushed up on his elbows, expecting Cas to help him sit up. But Castiel didn't move, his hands clenched around the rag that had been his t-shirt, and his eyes fixed on his bloodied hands.

"I wanted to fly you out of here, but I couldn't do that and heal the wound," Castiel said, the words pouring from his lips. A frown formed between his brows. "Or maybe I would've had enough energy but I wasn't sure…I can't judge my strength like before. It's difficult to predict."

"Cas," Dean said, stopping him. "Hey. Hey." He closed his hand around Castiel's wrist, and Cas shut his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, he seemed to have got a hold of himself. He let go of his spoiled t-shirt long enough to help Dean sit up and lean against the wall.

Dean reached for the flashlight and guided the beam over their surroundings. Cas had dragged Dean out of the water into a hollow within the cellar's wall. It was an alcove, really, with a vaulted ceiling and an even ground. A niche for a tomb, Dean realized, but if there'd been a coffin it had been removed long ago. He traced the flashlight's beam around the catacombs and spotted other alcoves, all of them empty. The light bounced off the water that covered every inch of the crypt's floor.

Dean remembered hitting the shallow pool and the stone beneath, the impact jarring his body. He also recalled the splash that followed. That had been Cas jumping in after him, knowing he'd left too many cultists alive.

Dean tipped the flashlight and ran the beam over the grate that covered the demon's hole.

"They locked us in, huh?" he asked.

"Yes," Cas said. "A clever move."

Dean bit his lip, battling the pain that writhed inside his belly like a nest of snakes.

"Would be a good idea to call Sam, then," he said, and tried for a smile.

"I tried," Castiel admitted. "I couldn't get through."

Dean clenched his fists, seized by the same wave of panic he always felt when he feared Sam was in danger.

"I'm sure he's fine," Cas said.

"Mm-hm." They didn't know Sam would be safe, not really, but Dean had a lot of practice shoving down his worry. He did make a mental note, though. When they made it out of here, the next person who suggested the three of them split up would get his ass kicked.

Dean huffed out a breath before he lifted Castiel's t-shirt again for another look at his injury. He told himself he'd had worse, but the sight of his skin dangling down in ragged flaps still turned his stomach.

"You'll have to sew that up, you know," Dean said.

"I know," Castiel agreed. "I wanted to wait until you came to."

"So I could enjoy the show?" Dean asked with a lopsided grin.

"So you wouldn't flinch when the pain woke you up."

Dean winced, his hand clutching at Castiel's t-shirt. Yeah, he knew the sort of pain he was in for. He also knew that the never-bats-an-eyelash macho existed only on the big screen.

"Dean?"

"Okay, let's do this."

With Castiel's help, Dean shifted so he could get at the small envelope in the back pocket off his jeans. Another habit Dean had inherited from his dad, always carry a motel sewing kit and a hip-flask filled with whiskey. Dean didn't have his flask, so needle and thread would have to do. First aid, Winchester-style.

Castiel wiped his hands on his pants, and Dean picked up the flashlight. He pulled up the hem of his own t-shirt and let out a long breath. As Cas set to work, Dean held up the flashlight and gritted his teeth. He watched as Castiel pulled the flaps of skin tightly together and started stitching. The tug on his wound hurt like hell, but it was the feel of the thread rasping through his flesh that raised gooseflesh on Dean's skin.

Cas had absorbed first aid skills as quickly as he'd mastered the art of car repair or crossbow hunting. Unlike fixing a car, however, stitching Dean up seemed to make the angel nervous. There was a tight set to his mouth, and his face seemed paler than before. Castiel's hands moved steadily, but his chest rose and fell in small, controlled breaths.

"You're doing real good, Cas," Dean assured him, and struggled to control his breathing so the muscles in his belly wouldn't quiver quite as much. His eyes steady on his task, Cas wiped at his face and left a dark smear on his cheek. When he was done and the wound was closed, Dean let out another careful breath and lowered the flashlight.

"Thanks," Dean said.

Beside him, Castiel closed the sewing kit's envelope. "This is so messy," he said in a soft voice.

Dean knew Cas felt guilty for his inability to heal him properly, frustrated by the limits his human body set on him. A touch of grace never failed, but hands could tremble and blunder.

 _Not your hands_ , Dean wanted to tell him. Instead, he rolled his t-shirt back down. Whenever he moved, the stitches pulled at his skin and the raw, cut-up flesh underneath. He started to feel nauseous too.

"Oh, fuck this shit," Dean muttered. He closed his eyes but the sound of the water rocking around the vault's bottom made it worse. Dean opened his eyes and looked down from the alcove. When he'd crashed into the crypt, the water had been no deeper than the length of one finger. If Dean stepped down from the niche now, it would reach to the middle of his calves.

"The water's rising isn't it?" Dean asked.

Castiel followed Dean's gaze, the smudge of Dean's blood standing out on his cheek. "Yes," he answered. "The tide's coming in, I think."

Dean thought of the water-logged alleys in Paraty's old town and Sam telling him that the sea flooded the streets when the moon was full. Dean had an idea that the houses near the harbor didn't bother with cellars. His gaze slipped back to the grate in the ceiling, a sense of unease building in his chest.

"It's a pretty big vault," Dean said slowly. "Small chance it'll fill up to the brink."

Castiel said nothing, and Dean's stomach dropped, pumping up a fresh wave of queasiness.

"Seriously?" Dean rasped. " _Seriously_?"

"The old watermarks reach as high as the ceiling," Cas said quietly. "It's most likely why they removed the sarcophagi."

Dean's eyes flicked up to the crypt's ceiling, which suddenly didn't seem to be that high at all. "I don't believe this," he muttered. "We're going to drown like rats in a barrel."

"I'm sure Sam will come back before that," Cas offered.

Dean snorted and raised the flashlight again, casting the beam into the corners of the vault. Solid walls all around, no way out except the demon's hole, and Dean just bet the fish brigade had replaced the padlock. Castiel watched Dean's exploration with a tired face that told Dean he'd already searched the crypt.

"I bet you wish you'd gone with Harper right now," Dean joked.

"No," Cas shot back. "But I'm beginning to believe you'd prefer if I had."

Dean bit down on an angry reply, his jaw tightening even though he knew he deserved the slight. Cas glared at him for a second or two, his earlier exasperation back in full swing, then he shook his head and sighed.

"I don't like him, Dean," he said. "Not like that."

Dean swallowed, unable to come up with an adequate answer. He couldn't bring himself to be honest and say, _I'm glad_.

Cas seemed to have given up the hope for a useful reaction. Adapting to the cramped space inside the alcove, he drew up his legs and folded his arms around his knees. With his curved back, the smooth lines of his arms and sharp angle of his elbows, he looked remarkably bird-like. Cas did that sometimes, hunching his body as if he needed to accommodate the weight of his wings. Wings Dean had touched only once, but his fingers remembered the surface of the feathers, warm and bristly like the underside of a cat's paw.

Dean knew the texture of Castiel's human skin as well; he'd kissed the top of his spine and the side of his throat, his hips, the soft insides of his thighs, the soles of his feet. He'd mapped every inch of Castiel's body with his fingers, and yet these last few days he'd shied away from putting so much as a hand on Castiel's shoulder. Was he really so damaged that he couldn't enjoy something so simple? That he couldn't go all in because he didn't trust that what they had would last?

No, Dean couldn't tell Cas the truth. If he did, he would have to admit that he wasn't jealous of Harper as a rival but jealous of the ease with which Harper approached Cas. It rankled that a stranger had no qualms touching Cas in a random, friendly manner while Dean balked at a harmless gesture like Cas touching his cheek. But who's fault was that?

Dean rolled the flashlight back and forth on the ground. He thought he'd figured out what held him back and if you knew a thing's name, you had the power to banish it, right? Why was it still so damn hard to be close with Cas the way he wanted?

But in the end it was again Castiel who made the first step. As he leaned back against the opposite wall of the alcove, he drew his arms away from his knees and tilted his leg against Dean's. Heart jumping in his chest, Dean pressed his thigh closer, the denim of his jeans catching against Castiel's jeans. He shouldn't get away with things this easily, but for now he was just grateful for the contact, the solid counterweight of Castiel's leg against his.

He hadn't actually asked for anything. Or explained anything. Castiel just seemed to know what Dean needed.

"Have you told him who you are?" Dean asked quietly.

"No," Castiel answered. "That would destroy the faith he has left. I don't want to do that."

Dean frowned. "How would knowing who you are destroy his faith?"

"He thinks God and his emissaries mean well."

And you think you're a bad example, Dean inferred. If there was one aspect of being human that Cas had down pat, it was man's penchant for low self-esteem. Or maybe that was a Winchester thing, Dean mused.

"Well, some of them do," Dean teased. He smiled in an attempt to lighten Castiel's mood, but the angel didn't look up.

"Yes," Cas agreed. "I killed most of them."

Swallowing guilt by the mouthful. Definitely a Winchester thing, Dean decided. It still mystified him how Cas could have so little awareness of his own worth. He was measuring his value only by the mistakes he'd made, when Dean could tell him that the good Cas did every day mattered more now than his missteps in the past. But Cas would never believe it, and Dean could relate. He had his own troubles with the concept of forgiveness.

Ignoring the fresh pain in his belly, Dean reached out and put his hand on Castiel's knee. "There's no talking to you."

At this, Cas did raise his head. "Well at least you are," he said with the beginning of a smile. "Talking."

Yes, that was another thing about Cas. He wouldn't let Dean get away with anything. Dean gave Castiel's knee a squeeze and Cas put his hand over Dean's.

"At first I thought it would be easier for you if I spent a night with Harper."

Dean snorted quietly. "Nope. It really wouldn't."

Cas shrugged. "You seemed uncomfortable with me being close to you all the time."

"What?" Dean blurted. "No. No, I…Cas, I thought it wouldn't be good for you. Being so focused on me." Dean bit his lip. Sam had warned him, hadn't he? And Cas had already thought Dean didn't like it when anyone mentioned the two of them. Damn, he'd been stupid not to realize that Cas would read his backing-off as rejection. "You need time to figure out who you are," he finished lamely.

"And you thought Harper would give me a better idea of who I am than you?" Cas asked, sounding honestly perplexed.

"I did not," Dean snapped, then calmed his voice with an effort. "I did not want you to hook up with Harper."

"Well, at least that's cleared up," Cas said, and damn but the bastard sounded amused.

Dean narrowed his eyes at him. "You're a pain in my ass, you know that?"

Cas raised a brow, which translated as an epic eye-roll in Cas-speak. Dean wanted to say something to wipe the smugness from Castiel's face, but instead he grabbed the angel's wrist and pulled him in, kissing Cas for the first time in days.

The first time in days. God, why had he ever thought it would be a good idea to go without this? When he touched Castiel's cheek, his face was cold and damp but his mouth was warm, so goddamn warm. Dean made a desperate sound, more revealing than he would have liked, and Castiel's hands flew up to hold his face, the press of his mouth hard on Dean's. After a time, Cas seized Dean's shoulders and shoved him carefully away. He kept Dean at arm's length and held his gaze.

"I don't need to be alone to find out who I am," Castiel said, voice low. "I like the person I am around Sam, Bobby, Missouri, and _you_." He let the words sink in, gently reminding Dean that Castiel's universe contained more than just the two of them. Cas tilted his head, as if he wanted to make sure Dean understood what he said. "I'm perfectly capable of drawing boundaries," he said. "So you can leave the decision over how much space I need to me."

Dean remained silent, and Cas frowned again. "It's not just that, is it?"

Dean returned his gaze, wary, expecting Castiel to see to the root of his problem and still not sure if he wanted him to.

Dean lifted his hand and wiped at the blood smeared on Castiel's cheek, his thumb trailing the angel's cheekbone.

"I thought you'd begun to doubt me," Cas mused. "That you thought I wouldn't be good for you, that I'd let you down. But it's not at all what you mean, is it?"

Dean winced, removed his hand from Castiel's face. "Cas."

"I said I wanted to stay," Cas insisted. "That I'd fight beside you until I could no longer."

"But that's the point," Dean blurted. "That's what fucks it all up for us, every time. I don't want you to die, not for some freaking cause and not for _me_." He swallowed, fear lodging like a shard in his chest. "Never for me. Cas, promise me—"

But he couldn't say it. He couldn't say, _don't throw yourself on fires because of me_. Cas didn't want to let him down – Jesus, it was the same reasoning that had led his dad to make the deal with Yellow Eyes, the same motivation that had driven Dean to swap his life for Sam's. There had to be a different way, there had to be, other than relying on each other, caring for each other just so they'd be willing to jump off a cliff when the time came.

Castiel kissed him again, maybe to encourage him to speak, but then it seemed like he couldn't let go. He nipped at Dean's lower lip and crowded Dean against the arch of the alcove just as Dean pulled him closer. Cas dug his fingers into Dean's hair, so obviously hungry for every little touch, and perhaps Dean hadn't been the only one who'd hated sleeping alone. Their bodies remembered their favorite patterns. Dean stroked his thumb down between Castiel's shoulder blades, and Cas reached for Dean's waist before he remembered Dean's wound and drew back with a frustrated grunt. They let go of each other and leaned back against the wall, side by side, catching their breaths.

"I'm no good at this," Dean muttered.

Cas shot him a look. "I don't have much comparison, but I think you're doing rather well."

"I don't mean the kissing," Dean said, and added. "I'm awesome at that."

Castiel chuckled, but Dean felt his next words wedge in his chest like a ball of stone. He spoke before his throat closed up too tight. "I'm not good at letting people in," he admitted. "Everyone close to me, everyone I let come close, they all disappear, Cas, one way or another. I lose them and I…I know how it feels."

There. There it was.

Cas tilted his head, understanding dawning on his face. "So you think it's better to distance yourself from me before my leaving will hurt you too."

Dean licked his lips and looked away. Cas didn't argue, didn't tell him his fears were nothing but smoke and mirrors. It took a load off Dean's heart, both that he'd told Cas the truth and that Cas accepted his issues.

"I fear the same thing."

"What?"

"Losing you," Cas said. "I fear the same thing." His hand drifted down over Dean's wound before his fingertips settled lightly on Dean's hip. "Even before we became…like this, the idea that I would have to continue without you made me uneasy. Humans break so easily."

 _So do you_ , Dean thought. He swallowed, slung his arm around Castiel's waist and pulled him close, breathing the all-too-ordinary mixture of blood and sweat on Castiel's skin.

Cas leaned his forehead against Dean's. "It never used to matter."

Dean ran his hand up Castiel's flank, his breath hitching when Cas put his hand over Dean's handprint scar.

"I don't know what's going to happen," Cas said. "If I'll ever be forced to leave or if you have to go. But in the meantime, could you be with me?"

Dean dug his fingers into Castiel's side, the angel's directness catching Dean off guard when it shouldn't anymore. "You're serious."

"Yes."

Dean shook his head, but here was the damnedest thing: he believed Cas. For the first time he believed, didn't doubt, didn't question why Cas would be crazy enough to put up with him.

"Yes," Cas repeated.

"Where do you come up with this stuff?" Dean asked. But he kissed Cas, gently this time, and spread his hand over the handprint on Castiel's chest. Cas brushed his nose against Dean's cheek, but when Dean chased after his mouth he moved too quickly and a sharp sting in his belly made him flinch. He dropped his hand to his wound and made himself breathe slowly.

"And can you not get yourself stabbed in the near future?" Cas murmured.

Dean closed his eyes against the pain rippling through his midriff. "You're asking a lot, mate."

Cas ran his thumb along Dean's jawline. "You could also let your beard grow in."

"I draw the line at religious tattoos."

"All right."

The creature that came down into the Haven's cellar might call itself the patriarch Almeida, but Sam had a hard time picturing him in a family shot in front of the Christmas tree. Oh sure. he walked on two legs and wore a black suit like he'd just come home from church, but there the resemblance to ordinary humans ended.

In a pinch, Sam would describe Almeida as one-third man, one-third fish, and one-third frog. There wasn't a single hair on him, he didn't even have any brows. His head was high and narrow, his nose flattened, and his round eyes had moved to the sides of his face. His lips had a bloated, melted look, and gills showed in the folds of his throat. The dead fish smell seemed to issue from his clothes, and Sam could picture all too well some oily residue oozing from Almeida's pores.

This was what Jack Conway had been morphing into when he appeared out of nowhere in Crystal Beach, this was what Bobby had described to them after he and Castiel were attacked in Rhode Island, and this was what Sam saw before he drowned in the warm Gulf waters. As it lumbered down the stairs, Sam utilized the nearest weapon and turned the sword in his grip. Harper took a more effective approach, though, pulled his gun out and shot Almeida in the head without hesitation.

Sam flinched at the gunshot, saw the blood spatter on the stairway and Almeida crash down on the steps.

"We don't have to wait if he stands up," Harper grunted and strode to the staircase. Pulling the Glock from his waistband, Sam followed. As he walked away from the altar, he felt a strange prickling in his back, as if he was frisked down by a host of wriggling feelers. The feeling chased goosebumps up and down his skin, but Sam bit his lip, determined not to turn.

Harper was already up the stairs when Sam clambered over Almeida. He was alive still, or at least his body was animated, his arms flopping weakly like the flippers of a seal. One of his eyes stared up at Sam from the mask of blood and blown-up flesh. As Sam eased past Almeida's head, he heard a gurgling sound that almost sounded like words.

"Sam, hurry up, mate," Harper called. Sam took two steps at once now, and he was almost at the threshold when a chair fell over in one of the upstairs rooms and another gunshot sounded.

Sam pounded up the rest of the stairs. "Harper!"

Bursting into the kitchen, Sam had barely enough time to register the fresh wave of fish smell before two wet hands seized him from behind. He reacted without thinking, hunched his back, and threw his attacker over his shoulder. The fishmutant went down easy, flying off Sam and crashing onto its back. This one wasn't as far along as Almeida, but the change was already obvious in its bulging eyes and whiskered mouth. When it opened its mouth, it bared sharp teeth, but only for a second because Sam's shoe connected with its head right before Sam jumped clean over it.

The sound of a scuffle came from the living room, and Sam streaked around the corner in the hall. He took in the scene of three fishmutants laying into Harper. One of them swung a baseball bat of all things, whacking the wood into Harper's back so he crashed face first onto the table and from there to the floor.

Sam shot the hitter with his Glock, but unlike Almeida, this fishmutant didn't drop. It snarled, vaulted across the table and came bounding at Sam so fast Sam only landed an ill-aimed shot in its shoulder. Again Sam's body took over, drawing on years of combat training. He swiveled on one heel to sidestep his attacker and at the same time dropped the Glock to swing the sword with both hands. The blade went through the fishmutant's neck, cutting his head clean off its shoulders. The fishmutant twitched and hit the floor squirming.

Whirling around, Sam had time enough to see the remaining two mutant's yank Harper off the floor and throw him through the porch door. The door, already battered, broke under Harper's weight, and Sam heard his body hit the porch with a resounding crack. Next thing Sam knew, the crack repeated and the noise amplified, as if a length of wood had split or an old branch split from a tree. Sam knew then, that the house's porch was on the way down, and Harper would go with it.

With the water rising, Dean and Castiel had retreated to the back of the alcove. But of course the tidewater poured right over the edge, and the puddle in the niche came up to their ankles now. Dean's jeans were soaked through and the hem of his t-shirt stuck to his back, tacky where the water sogged the blood-crusted cotton. Heat faded from his body, blood loss and cold sea each doing its part.

Castiel sat at Dean's back, one arm slung around Dean's chest. When Dean shifted, the water rocked around them and slapped against his belly, leaving a lick of salt to burn into his injury. Dean hissed with the shock, and Cas cursed in Enochian.

"Salt's gonna disinfect it at least," Dean gritted. Castiel's arm tightened around his chest, his feet pushed against the sandstone slab beneath them, and a faint rush of wings filled the cramped space around them. It didn't work though; Cas still couldn't fly. His next curse sounded sharp enough to split the stones over their heads.

"We need to get out of this hole," Dean said. "We'll hold out longer if we float in the vault."

"Wait," Cas said, and used his cellphone for the third time. It was so quiet in the crypt, Dean heard Sam's voicemail message even though Cas held the phone against his own ear.

_This is Sam. You know what to do._

Dean closed his eyes. Cas didn't leave a message this time.

"All right," Dean muttered, and shuffled toward the edge of the alcove. He slid down into the vault and the water closed over his chest. Standing up hurt like hell and his stomach threatened to heave, filling Dean's mouth with the sour pre-taste of bile and blood. Cas followed, pushing a wave against Dean's back as he waded toward him.

"Let's hope he didn't have a run in with the fish-guys," Dean said. He tried to put weight on his left foot, but a surge of fresh pain made his knees buckle.

Castiel grabbed his arm and held him steady. "Perhaps it's just bad reception."

"Yeah." Dean wanted to make a bad joke about Sam being too lost in his contemplation of the hillside flora – _this is a blueberry speckle orchid, very rare_ – but didn't have the energy. He leaned on Cas, his head swimming with dizziness.

The flashlight still shone in the alcove, but it was under water now, sending ribbons of light rippling to the surface. Dean thought briefly about taking it with him, then left it behind and let Cas lead him to the circle of paper-thin light that fell down from the demon's hole. He pressed a hand over his stitches, but each step felt like a new knife in his belly.

"Cas, I don't think…"

"It's okay," Cas said. "We can stay here."

Ten square meters of living room stood between Sam and Harper, not to mention two creatures that looked like a sailor's nightmares become flesh. Sam didn't hesitate. The two remaining fishmutants came at him, and he sprinted across the room to meet them. He neutralized the first attacker with a swipe across his belly, the sword's blade sliding through flesh and muscle that seemed way too soft. The second mutant wielded a knife, and Sam barely evaded the first slice, jerking his shoulder away from the blade. He ducked the fishmutant's second stab and kicked the thing's legs out from under him. As the mutant crashed flat on his face, Sam dropped to one knee, raised the sword high, and jammed it down between the fishmutant's shoulders.

Another wooden crash sounded from outside, the porch screeched, and this time the house shivered a little. Letting go of the sword, Sam leapt at the open doorway, saw part of the porch's balustrade rip off and fall, saw the roof dip and bits of debris roll off its edge in a shower.

Harper lay crumpled on the edge of the porch, one arm already hanging over the void and the floorboards quivering beneath him. Sam dropped to his knees and flung himself flat on his belly, arms reaching out. Empty crates had been piled by the house's wall, and now they slithered across the slanting porch, the stacks canting forward before they toppled over the edge. Floorboards cracked, the floor sagged, and Harper with it.

"Harper!" Sam yelled, his fingertips inches from Harper's hand. The porch slumped like the elevator in Disney's Haunted Mansion and Harper's eyes flew open. The outermost boards of the porch snapped right off, and for a second Harper's legs were in the air, nothing beneath him but a sheer drop, then his hand grabbed Sam's, and Sam hauled him up.

Harper scrambled to the back of the porch, floorboards splintering in his wake. As the porch's roof came crashing down, Sam reared up into a crouch, grabbed Harper by the scruff of his shirt, and yanked him back through the doorway. They both dropped on the living room floor, Harper half on top of the dead fishmutant. Outside, the Haven's porch crumpled like a house of cards and tumbled into the abyss.

Dean felt like he'd been treading water for hours. The floor beneath his feet was long gone, the water filled about two thirds of the vault, and still the sea level kept on rising. Dean wondered where the water came from, assumed it must be from the cracks in the wall and the holes in the ground, the sewers too small to fit through, for a human at least.

Castiel was behind him, his arm wrapped around Dean's chest again. Overcome by exhaustion, Dean started drifting only to jerk awake when the weight off his legs dragged him down and Castiel's grip tightened.

"Sorry," Dean muttered, and thrust his body up again. _Like a cork bobbing in a bathtub_ , he thought.

As the tide lifted them closer to the ceiling, Cas kicked his legs and pushed toward the demon's hole. He pulled Dean along and reached up, hooking his fingers to the grate.

"Here," he said, shifting so they floated chest to chest.

Dean looked up and tried to grab the grate as well. Raising his arms was sheer agony, but Dean forced his hand up anyway, only to cry out when the stretch of his body pulled at the stitches. Dean dropped back into the water, but Cas grabbed his shirt before he went under.

"I'm sorry, I can't," Dean gasped.

Adjusting his grip on the grate, Cas hooked his arm around Dean's back and pulled him close. "Hold on like this."

Biting down on a grunt, Dean wrapped his good arm around Cas. He moved his legs, paddled his feet back and forth to relieve Cas of some of his weight and hoped he wouldn't black out. He dropped his forehead against Castiel's shoulder and felt the angel's muscles strain under his palm.

Castiel's back was wet and slippery, hard to hold on to.

"How long can you keep this up?" Dean rasped.

Cas set his face in such a tight mask it looked like it had frozen solid. "Long enough."

The Haven was quiet again and the shadows of the meshed curtains swayed on the ceiling. _Quiet as a grave_ , Sam thought. Panting, he dropped his head back on the floor.

Harper made a disgusted sound beside him, and when Sam turned his head, he saw the hunter clamber over the mutant Sam had killed. Once again, Sam was aware of a briny smell, only this time he was certain of the source. A puddle of gray, viscous liquid had formed beneath the corpse. It darkened the yellow t-shirt it had on and pooled beneath its arms. In the waning light, Sam noticed a crest of translucent fins that ran from its wrist to its elbow.

 _How do they get about?_ Sam wondered, because surely no one who met these creatures on the street would mistake them for mere human.

Harper got up on his knees and, pressing his mouth into a tight line, pulled the sword from the creature's back.

"You'd be wanting this back I'm sure?" he asked, and handed over the weapon.

Sam pushed himself off the floor. "Thanks."

As he clambered to his feet, Harper took Sam's arm and helped him up. "No, mate," he said. "Thank _you_."

Sword secured, Harper and Sam left the Haven by the front. Perhaps out of habit, Harper closed the door behind them, and the metal click of the lock had Sam sigh out a breath of relief. Far better to be on this side of the threshold.

While they'd been searching the Haven and fighting the brigade from the Black Lagoon, the sun had set and the sky had darkened, palm trees swaying under a blanket of iron-gray clouds. Sam heard the first raindrops hitting the roof and a gush of wind sawing through the forest.

"Come on," Harper said, and fumbled his car keys from his pocket. "Be glad to see the last of this place."

He was halfway down the porch steps when Sam stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

Harper froze. "What is it?"

Sam looked over at the dark wall of rainforest and listened. There went the wind again, a soft whisper through the palm leaves and the rain coming in spurts. There was something else too, a growing crackle of underbrush, a snap of twigs and a furtive, gurgling noise, like water bubbling from a backed-up drain.

"We need to go," Sam said.

Harper frowned. "It's what I've been saying, mate."

"No," Sam said. "We need to _go_."

Harper's frown deepened until suddenly he went stock-still and his eyes widened. His hand shot to the gun in his waistband, but Sam suspected that even if they both ran through their clips, it wouldn't make much of a difference. The forest around the house was swaying and rustling like a storm battered the trees, but the wind didn't blow anymore.

Without speaking, Harper and Sam both looked for Harper's jeep. The car stood a good fifteen meters away from the house at the mouth of the road. Perhaps if they ran they could make it.

Inside the fringe of the forest, voices burbled, their noise no longer subdued but getting louder. Squeaks and screeches mixed with the blubbering calls. One more time, Sam inhaled the odor of fish gone bad. The stench closed around him on all sides.

Harper puffed out a breath. "On three."

Sam had gone through some dark times in his life, but the dash to Harper's jeep easily counted among the scariest experiences he'd ever had. In the settling twilight, the jeep was no more than a smudge in the gloom, but Sam never slowed. Half-blind, he raced across the clearing while monstrous voices bugled and shrieked in the trees. Shrubs crashed and the meadow crawled with shapes and shades all slithering Sam's way.

How many were there, fifty, a hundred? _More_?

Sam and Harper flung themselves into the jeep, and Harper gunned the engine, tires kicking up dirt as he swung the car around. Something hit the jeep's soft top with a smack, but Harper rammed in the gear and they were off, tires skidding.

Sam fumbled for the seatbelt, the jeep jolting hard over bumps and crags as Harper sped down the unsealed road like a bat out of hell. Leaves whacked against the jeep's side, and the headlights jumped up and down ahead of them, illuminating a crisscross of branches and trailing vines. Sam twisted around, but saw nothing behind them except the clutch of palm leaves and wild bushes.

"We're good," Sam shouted. "Harper, we're good!"

The jeep hit a pothole hard enough Sam's teeth clacked together, and Harper cursed, jerking at the wheel to keep the jeep from rolling. Another palm frond slapped against the windshield before the jeep shot out from the underbrush and onto a wider stretch of road. Harper eased off the gas and the jeep rolled more smoothly down the hill.

Heart pounding, Sam slumped back in his seat and let out a pent-up breath.

" _Raios me partam_ ," Harper rasped, and turned to Sam. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "Jesus."

"It's like bloody hell broke loose up there!"

"You've got no idea how right you are," Sam muttered and closed his eyes. The half-glimpsed legions of hybrid creatures teeming out of the forest still made his skin crawl. Like roaches pouring out from under a rock. Sam swallowed.

"Jesus," Harper repeated. "You've got the sword?"

"Yeah," Sam answered, and opened his eyes. He realized he still clutched the hilt of the weapon and eased his grip. The blade was soiled with the sticky goo that had oozed out of the fish-guy it had killed, but Sam didn't have it in him to clean the sword just then. Careful, he put it on the jeep's backseat.

"Sam," Harper said, his voice strained. "What we've just seen, man. How's one sword gonna stop all this?"

"Honest?" Sam asked. "I don't know. We just have to hope it'll help."

 _Like we always do_ , he thought, going over the thingamajigs they'd used against big evils in the past. The Horsemen's rings, phoenix ash, the Colt. Damn, Sam hoped the sword would work better than the Colt had on Lucifer. "I'm getting too old for this shit," he muttered, repeating one of Dean's favorite phrases. He patted down his pockets, pulled out his cellphone and flipped it open. Three reception bars, thank God. He also had two messages, both from Castiel's phone.

Outside, the rain started in earnest, and Harper switched on the windshield wipers. "I read up about Cthulhu when Tamara and Mira made contact," Harper said. "But that up there, the things in the forest, that statue in the cellar – I've never been so afraid."

"I know," Sam agreed as he dialed his mailbox. "It's weird. It was just a statue but—"

"It felt like a hole," Harper finished. "A black hole, like the ones in space. Only it opened up to something intelligent. That make sense?"

"Yes," Sam said, thinking of rifts in reality. "It was like a door that shouldn't be open but," Sam stopped, frowned as the first message played. "Wait."

He listened to Castiel's voice, the panic Cas had barely reined in, and any theories he'd had flew right out of his head. He must have shown some of his shock on his face because Harper frowned.

"Sam? What's wrong?"

 _We've been attacked_ , Cas said. _Sam, one of them had a knife. I didn't get to Dean in time_.

"My brother's hurt," Sam said, his voice sounding distant to his own ears.

_I don't know how bad it is._

"What?" Harper said sharply. "Bad?"

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and struggled with the picture of Dean staring dead-eyed up at the ceiling. It wouldn't go, no matter how much Sam tried to push it down. When the recording finished, he was cold all over, and his stomach twisted slowly into a knot.

"Cas says he's fixed the worst damage, but they're trapped," Sam murmured, his heart thumping in his chest. _Dean's going to be fine_ , he told himself. Cas had his back, he always did. Sam cleared his throat. "They were jumped in one of the churches. Must've been another cell of the cultists."

"Jesus," Harper cursed, "Fuck, we'll be back in town in, wait, twenty minutes. Where are they? Can you give them a call?"

"Yeah, I'll let them know we're—" Sam began and broke off as his mailbox picked up again. Listening, Sam stared out the windshield at the rain that hammered down onto the jeep in a thickening rush.

Castiel's next message told Sam the crypt was filling with water.

The narrow space under the crypt's ceiling slowed every noise and each small splash reverberated over the water before rolling back from the walls. Perhaps it was Dean's imagination, but he thought he felt the gentle push and pull of the sea, the waves cresting and falling and rising again.

  


Dean closed his eyes, his breath warming in the small space between his mouth and Castiel's shoulder. His body slid down before he knew it, sinking with the gravity beneath the water until Castiel's arm clenched tight around him. The angel's fingers dug into his side hard enough to hurt and startled Dean into tightening his own grip.

"Don't you dare," Cas snapped at him. "Don't you dare let go."

"Cas," Dean began, shocked.

"Don't. I swear, I'll smite your ass."

Dean opened his mouth only to swallow seawater and sputter. Cas hoisted him higher, and Dean saw there was only an inch or two between Castiel's head and the grate now. The water reached up over their chins and licked at Dean's lower lip.

Cas spit out a bit of water too, and Dean went rigid with fear, a fresh rush of adrenaline punching through his exhaustion. Castiel could hold them up 'til kingdom come, but he had to breathe now that his grace was weaker, and if the water breached the grate…

Dean looked up, desperate to find a loophole. If Cas pressed his face to the grate maybe, but the iron bars were too tightly meshed.

"I can give you some room," Dean said, and Cas stiffened.

"Dean, no."

"I won't go down, I promise."

Gritting his teeth, Dean let go of Castiel and fumbled his fingers through the grate. Cas wouldn't take his arm away entirely, but he loosened his grip, allowing Dean to hold his own weight. Hanging from the grated trapdoor, Dean choked out a moan. He wouldn't be able to do this for long but he nodded at Cas. "Try it."

Cas thrashed his legs, used his shoulder to push against the grate but couldn't move it. He made a frustrated sound, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, before he sunk down again. His eyes were wide and dark as he stared at Dean, and the muddy, vanishing light had leached all color from his face.

Releasing the grate, Dean reached for Cas again. He returned his arm around Castiel's back and fitted himself as close against him as he could. Cas shivered, and Dean leaned his forehead against Castiel's, closing his eyes to the fast drumming of his heart.

Cas let out a breath that pushed against Dean's mouth and tangled their legs together under the water. He pulled them up until the grate pressed against the top of their heads, and they couldn't go any further.

All day the weather had been building up to a storm, and by the time the sun had set, the sky broke open and released water masses akin to the deluge. Rain rushed down onto the roofs of the houses in Paraty's old town, palms shuddered under the onslaught of water, and the gutters spilled over in the streets. The pier and parking lot in front of the _Capela de Santa Rita_ had been swamped and the lawn in front of the church had turned into a large puddle. The tide was still high.

Harper's jeep came tearing down the hill like a race car down an off-road track. Windshield wipers swiping back and forth, the jeep streaked along the harbor road and plowed into the flooded parking lot. The engine hadn't even stopped running when Sam jumped out, his feet hitting the water with a splash. With a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Sam sprinted across the lawn, the dark shape of the church looming straight ahead of him. Within seconds Harper was running beside him, leaving the jeep behind with its lights on and both doors open.

Sam banged through the church's front door. He vaulted over the velvet cord separating the church's lobby from the museum and hit the ground running, hooking around a pillar in the church's left aisle. The latticed door to the side-room gaped open in front of him.

All the way down the hill, he'd tried Castiel's phone and Dean's, but neither of them could be reached. Numbers tumbled through Sam's head; one and half hours since Cas left his last message, thirty-three minutes since Harper and Sam left the Haven. How fast would the tide fill up the streets and vaults of Paraty? How much faster when it rained?

 _Maybe it's not too late_ , Sam prayed. _Maybe we're still time_.

Sam skidded to a halt in the doorway, and Harper bumped into his shoulder, raising his flashlight. The beam fell into the room and lit up the hole to the catacombs, the grate that covered it and the water that had already brimmed beyond the hole's edge.

Dark water, overspilling the crypt, spreading in a puddle and no sign of either Dean or Castiel.

It felt like the floor dropped out from under him, but Sam didn't falter, didn't hesitate. He jammed his hand into the duffel and pulled out a fistful of glow sticks, snapping them as Harper shot the lock on the grate. Together they lifted the grate off the hole and Sam jumped in feet first.

Six minutes until a trained person ran out of breath under water. Two if you didn't have practice.

Sam let go of the glow sticks as he dived down, their luminescence spreading below him and bathing the submerged vault in a ghostly green light. A pillar reached down to the floor, its circumference the only reference point in the gloom until one of the glow sticks settled on the ground and illuminated Dean, his unmoving form sinking slowly.

Heart squeezing to a standstill in his chest, Sam kicked his legs out and reached for his brother. He got Dean round the chest and pulled him up, the lead weight of Dean's body threatening to unravel every last bit of self-control Sam had.

 _Please, no_ , Sam begged. _Please, please, no_.

He was struggling to get a better grip on Dean when Dean suddenly spasmed, his head twitching and his eyes opening briefly before his body went limp again. Sam shook him, willing him to hold on.

 _Not too late_ , Sam repeated to himself and swam for the exit. _Not too late_.

Even as he pushed for the hole, Sam looked around until his gaze lit on Cas, lying flat on the ground with his dark hair waving in the water. His eyes were closed, and his face looked marble smooth in the soft sheen of the glow sticks.

Sam cried out before he could stop himself, the sound coming out in a burst of bubbles. He thrashed his legs, thrust toward the circle of Harper's flashlight above the demon's hole and broke the water's surface with a gasp. Locked in the crook of Sam's arm, Dean spluttered and retched, his eyes still closed and his face white as a sheet.

Harper was there in a heartbeat, grabbing Dean's arms and dragging him from the hole.

"I've got him," Harper shouted. "Go!"

Pulling air into his lungs, Sam tensed his muscles and plunged back in. Knowing where to go, he cut straight through the water until he reached Cas. He seized Cas around the waist, crouched on the ground, and pushed up with his feet. He reached the hole within a few seconds, but unlike Dean, Cas didn't react to his rescue. When they broke through the surface, Sam had to tilt Castiel's head back to keep his face above water, but even then Cas didn't twitch.

Desperate, Sam tried to hoist Cas onto the church floor, but it took Harper's help to lift him clean out of the water. Once Harper eased Cas onto the ground, Sam scrambled out of the flooded crypt with heavy, dripping clothes. His gaze flitted to Dean, who lay heaving on the far side of the hole, before he moved to help Harper with Cas. Harper shook his head, though.

"I know what to do," he said. "Check on your brother."

Sam bit his lip, reluctant to leave because Cas lay so terribly still but also wanting so badly to know whether Dean was okay. Wiping a hand over his face, he stumbled around the demon's hole and dropped down to his knees beside his brother. He lifted Dean so that he lay half in Sam's lap, his head cushioned against Sam's chest.

His breath wheezing in and out of his lungs, Dean clutched at Sam's knee. He grimaced and drew up his left leg, digging his fingers into his own thigh.

Searching for damage, Sam lifted the soaked hem of Dean's t-shirt and got his first glimpse of the knife wound stitched together with black thread. The skin around it looked tender and red, and the rivulets of water that ran down Dean's side turned pink once they slid past the stitches. Nasty job, that wound, but not lethal, not anymore. Dean's hand flexed on his thigh, and he was obviously in pain, but he was alive, still alive. Sam hugged Dean against him, mindful of the injury but unwilling to let him go far.

"Sam," Dean croaked, and twisted in Sam's hold. "Where—"

His eyes seemed to clear a little, and he searched around the room until he found Cas and Harper. Harper, who by now had both hands braced on Castiel's chest, was administering CPR with a face hard as stone.

Sam's heart constricted, but Dean flinched like he'd been electrocuted, his body straining against Sam's arm. He made a sound that started as Castiel's name but ended in a violent coughing fit. He would've dragged himself across the room if Sam hadn't had the sense to hold him back.

"Dean, no," Sam blurted. "Harper's taking care of him."

Dean still struggled, too weak to pull free, but Sam knew from the way Dean's body was shaking that he didn't want to be here, that it was torture for him to just watch.

"It's going to be okay," Sam rasped, and he hoped, oh how he hoped he was right. For the last two hours he'd done nothing but pray to a God he didn't have faith in anymore, but he couldn't stop and the pleas ran through his head on a loop.

  


Harper pumped Castiel's chest without tiring, but the seconds ticked by and with each moment it felt to Sam as if the cold water from the vault was rising up around his heart.

"Breathe," Sam whispered. "Come on, man. You're an angel. Angels don't drown."

Dean flinched and his fingers dug so hard into Sam's knee, Sam knew there would be bruises.

"Breathe," Sam repeated. His eyes stung with more than salt water but just when his hope faltered and his heart prepared to crack in two, the world decided to give them one more break. Castiel's legs twitched, his hand fluttered on the floor, and his eyes flew open. He tried to draw in a breath and water burst past his lips, his whole upper body jerking off the floor as he gagged and retched.

Harper reacted quickly, braced Cas as he lurched up, and held him steady. The first breath Cas drew rattled all around the room, it was that noisy.

Sam laughed out loud with relief, but Dean slumped against his chest as if every last bit of strength had seeped right out of him.

"He made it," Sam said, and shook Dean a little. "Son of a bitch made it."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. His gaze never left Cas, as if he was afraid to lose sight of him even for a second. "'S tough—"

"For a little nerdy guy with wings," Sam finished and smiled. "You guys. You're going to be the death of me, you know that?"

Dean didn't say anything, but he didn't make any attempt to untangle himself from Sam's hug either.

On the other side of the room, Harper helped Castiel lay on his side. While Cas spat out the rest of the water he'd swallowed, Harper stroked his back and murmured soft words that were impossible to catch across the distance.

_Casa Verde Hostel, Paraty_

It was still raining when Dean woke up and the trees outside rushed like the sea beneath the downpour. The balcony doors and windows stood open as usual, and the sheets of Dean's bed had cooled along with the temperature.

Dean swallowed, his throat as rough as sandpaper. He had only vague memories of his return to the hostel. He'd been in Harper's jeep and felt the car hum against his back, then Sam had led him into a bathroom and poured peroxide over his stitches. He'd helped Dean out of his soaked clothes and into dry boxers. Harper had given him something for the pain, someone else had wiped the sea-salt from his face, and they'd bundled him into bed.

A soft, gray twilight filled the room. Morning couldn't be far off but Dean was still dead tired. He would've gone straight back to sleep if not for the one thing he needed to do first.

Mindful to favor his injured side, Dean raised his head and looked around, gaze brushing past Sam's empty bed until it landed on Cas.

Like Dean, Cas lay on his side. He'd curled into a tight ball and the top-sheet had slid down to his feet, leaving his body exposed to the moist air from the open window.

Gritting his teeth, Dean slipped out of his bed and pushed up on his feet. The movement pulled and bit at his wound but Dean didn't care. He put his hand over the fresh bandage on his midriff and hobbled across the room.

Cas was gone so deep he didn't stir, not even when Dean climbed into bed with him, but he was alive and he was within reach and that was all Dean needed for now. He rested his forehead against the back of Castiel's head before he stretched out and pulled the sheet up over both of them.

Carefully tugging Cas into the curve of his body, Dean closed his eyes and soaked up the rhythm of Castiel's slow, steady breathing.

Standing beyond the doorway, Sam watched as Dean rolled out of bed and padded across the room. He waited for Dean to check on Cas from the edge of the bed, but instead Dean crawled right under the sheets with him. Sam raised his brows, surprised but not really baffled anymore. When it came to those two, he'd begun to expect the unexpected.

Sam snorted softly through his nose. At least it looked like Dean and Cas were patching things up. Nothing like a near-death experience to get the forgiveness rolling.

Sam crossed his arms and rubbed the instep of his foot over a mosquito bite in his calf. He'd been pushing Dean to share what bothered him because he thought Dean needed to get it out into the open. The truth was, though, that Sam had a good idea why Dean had pulled away from Cas. He'd watched Dean's face in Arkansas when it looked like Meg would shoot Cas in the heart. Sam had a strong hunch that in that moment Dean had realized, _really_ realized, that Cas could die much like the rest of them. So maybe he'd decided not to stick around only to discover how much losing Cas would hurt.

Sam got that. He'd been riding on the same track for a long time. The belief that it would be better to keep his distance had wormed itself into his heart after Jess's death. He'd reasoned that being close with people wasn't worth the heartbreak.

But he didn't believe that anymore.

 _I'm glad we joined forces_. Mira's words echoed in his head, and Sam had meant every word when he'd answered that, yeah, so was he.

Sam smiled. Mira had come into his life just when he'd begun to feel safe in his own skin again, and it felt like she was the final turn into a new direction. He felt better, more balanced than he had in years. Maybe the world would end bloody, but at least he would have lived for real until then.

He hoped Dean would learn to feel the same way.

Sam leaned against the doorframe, unwilling to let Dean out of his sight yet. His grumpy, guarded, loud-mouthed brother. Wrapped around Cas like he wouldn't be able to rest if there was so much as an inch of space between them.

Sam watched them and wondered how hungry Dean had been for the comfort of human touch, how often he'd been allowed to give it, how seldom he'd received it. John had raised them to be strong, but he'd never been very affectionate. Sam knew that casual touch never came easy to him, even with Jess it had always been her who kissed Sam on the top of the head or squeezed his hand. He'd figured Dean was wired the same way, but maybe Dean had hidden more behind his no-chick-flicks façade than even Sam suspected. With a pang he regretted all the times he'd shrugged off Dean's hand growing up only because he'd been angry at their father.

For a second Sam wondered how Dean and Cas were with each other when no one was looking, but _oh ho no_ , he really did not want to go there.

The sound of footsteps startled Sam from his thoughts and he looked up, grateful for the distraction. Bare feet stepping softly on the hardwood floor, Harper came down the hall with a coffee mug in each hand. He'd reached the door before Sam had the sense to intervene and of course Harper saw Dean and Cas right away. He froze, his face immobile for a second before he tipped his head.

"Huh," Harper said. "That explains a lot."

"Yeah, uhm," Sam floundered. "Sorry about that."

Harper shrugged, and handed Sam his coffee. "I knew I hadn't approached Cas in the right way yet," he said. "I just didn't know there was no chance at all."

But his gaze slipped back to the two men in the bed, and Sam got the impression Harper wasn't quite as cool about his dashed hopes as he pretended to be. He raised his mug and sipped at his coffee, masking any expression his face might make before he turned and walked away.

Sam felt a bit bad for him. Maybe he should have given Harper some sort of warning. But in his defense: it had taken Sam until now to realize no one had a chance of getting between those two.

Sam found Harper in the common room half an hour later. The ex-priest sat at one of the tables with his laptop, a newspaper, and a fresh mugful of coffee in front of him. Sam fetched a refill for himself and snagged two donuts from the free food box. When he sat down at the table, Harper moved the paper to make room for him.

"Your brother and Cas still asleep?" he asked, maybe a touch too casually.

"Out like a light, the both of them," Sam said, and offered Harper the second donut.

Harper shot him a wry smile but declined the offer with a shake of his head. He picked up his coffee and leaned back in his chair. "I've been calling around," he said. "Tried to find out if anyone got wind of something strange happening up the hill."

"Let me guess," Sam prompted.

"No one's heard or seen anything," Harper confirmed.

"Shocker," Sam muttered, and bit into his donut. Last night when they'd reached the hostel, Harper had gone to wake up Fausto and his boyfriend. Sam hadn't been surprised when Fausto had showed up with three rifles and army-issue flashlights. Fausto, Marcos, and Harper had patrolled the hostel's wrap-around balconies until sunrise. Sam had stayed with Dean and Castiel, but he'd sat by the open window and listened for the sound of gurgling voices rising in the garden.

The night had passed without incident, so maybe killing Almeida had scared the fishmutants off.

If they had killed him.

"You know, I can't get that cellar out of my mind," Harper said quietly.

"Yeah, me too," Sam admitted. He swallowed the bite of donut and pudding that was way too sweet for him really. He found he couldn't reconstruct the exact look of the Cthulhu idol. In truth he didn't really mind that, but when his mind didn't focus on the altar it dragged up the image of the speared corpse. "That corpse," Sam said out loud. "Do you think that was Nunes?"

Harper nodded. "It crossed my mind, yeah."

"So cutting the head off the snake didn't really do the trick," Sam said. "The other followers of the cult ganged up and followed him up the hill."

"It's a likely scenario."

Sam thrummed his fingers on the table. "They must've picked a new leader," he said. "One of Almeida's ancestors?"

"If not Almeida himself," Harper said grimly. "Think about the state of his mutation. He's been dealing with Cthulhu magic a long time that one. And all sources say the followers who come into the Old Ones' good graces don't die."

Sam clenched his hands, imagining the century-old creature squatting in the green shadows of his house like a toad. He must've hovered over the hill like a toxic fog. No wonder Paraty officials reconsidered their plans to connect with São Colina.

"But if they picked a new leader, why didn't they get back on track?" Sam wondered. "Why didn't they return to the coast?"

"Maybe it got too hot for them," Harper suggested. "Nunes didn't defeat the cult on his own. That mayor, you remember him? He backed Nunes up with a company of soldiers fresh off a boat from Salvador da Bahia. They had that and more reinforcements on their way. Would have been hard for the cult to gain a foothold against such odds."

"So they went into hiding," Sam concluded.

"Infesting the hills like maggots," Harper agreed.

Sam winced but couldn't deny the appropriateness of the comparison. With disgust he remembered the squishy softness of the fish bodies, their drooping mouths and coin-sized eyes. There was something intangibly repulsive about the Cthulhu cultists.

Sam pulled a face. He wiped chocolate frosting from his fingertips and found he'd lost all appetite for his donut.

People started drifting into the common room for breakfast; Bree and Janette, the Canadian girls, and Felix, Dean's backpacker buddy. The fridge was opened, porcelain clinked and someone turned on the radio.

Harper lowered his voice. "I did some other research," he said.

Sam raised his brows. "About?"

"The sword," Harper answered. "About how it could be used."

"And?"

Harper smiled an apology at the eagerness in Sam's voice. "Man, I've got no clue. But I think there's someone who might be able to help you out."

He shoved a page with a name, telephone number, and address toward Sam.

"Eloni Nam'ulu?" Sam read.

" _Professor_ Eloni Nam'ulu," Harper clarified. "She's teaching archaeology and ethnology at Oxford. She helped me out with the translation of some old spell scrolls some ways ago. I thought she might have an idea where to get an instruction manual for that pig sticker."

"Do you trust her?" Sam asked.

"I do. I already called her," Harper admitted. "Turns out she's way ahead of us."

"What?" Sam perked up. "How? Is she a hunter?"

"No," Harper said. "But she's seen behind the curtain if you know what I mean. Anyway, she says she's been aware of strange events along the coasts of South America and in the Pacific Islands for a while now so she took a sabbatical to check them out. She's headquartered in Chile most of the time, but is currently on Easter Island. Eloni says there are rumors of rituals being held on some of the islands that no one should know squat about. She collected quite a bit of intel, but she didn't know who she could trust with it."

"But she trusts you back," Sam said.

"Seems like it," Harper said with a nod.

"Okay. Good enough for me." Sam looked over the contact details, already planning how to get from Paraty to Chile. They would have to fly under the radar somehow because the visa Bobby got them didn't extend to countries other than Brazil.

"You said she can help _us_ out?" Sam tracked back to Harper's earlier sentence.

"Yes," Harper said. "Guess I won't be coming with you when you go."

He didn't say it was because of Dean and Castiel and how it might make things a bit complicated, but Sam didn't need a translation.

"It's better that way," Harper continued. "Besides, someone needs to clean up those hills."

"You don't even know how many are up there," Sam said, worried.

"Only one way to find out." Harper smiled again and scratched at his beard. "I'm sure Fausto and Marcos will lend a hand."

Sam didn't really know what to say. Until later, see you around, catch you on the flipside. Hunters didn't use those phrases.

Harper closed his laptop and got to his feet before Sam had figured it out. "I think I'll have a smoke," he said. "You want one?"

Sam laughed. "Nah, I'd rather die the old-fashioned way."

"Eaten by a Rugaru," Harper suggested.

"Or ganked by a ghost."

"Fair enough." Harper grinned tiredly. "It's been good working with you, Sam."

"Likewise," Sam said.

Harper had already turned away when Sam thought to stop him.

"Hey," Sam called after him. He ripped a corner off the newspaper and quickly wrote down Bobby’s number. He held up the scrap of paper and Harper took it with a raised brow.

"If you ever need help," Sam explained. "You can get us here."

Harper looked at Sam, and something flicked over his face fast enough Sam couldn’t read it. He put Bobby’s number carefully into his pocket and held out his hand.

"You three be safe, okay?" Harper said.

"Yeah,” Sam answered, and shook his hand. "You too, man."

The morning smelled like summer, blue and cloudless. Sunlight filtered through the mosquito nets in the open windows and warmed the bedroom.

Dean had woken up minutes ago but he hadn't moved, lying on the bed with his face half sunk into a pillow and a sleeping Cas wrapped around him.

They'd switched positions during the night so Cas spooned against Dean's back. The angel had one arm slung over Dean's waist, and his hand rested low on Dean's belly, his fingertips tucked beneath the waistband of Dean's boxers. With Cas crowded against his back and the possessive placement of his hand, no wonder he'd woken up half hard. Dean smiled. There'd be no complaints from his corner.

Wings flapped outside on the balcony, the sound followed by the trill of a parakeet. Dean imagined palm leaves shuddering in the breeze, the garden green and tropical, drops of water glistening on the lawn. The storm was over.

When Dean shifted, he expected his stab wound to act up but it didn't. Frowning, he padded down his belly but found nothing but a scar. The bandage had vanished too.

Dean stiffened, fully awake now and worried. Cas had been a wreck last night, and he shouldn't have wasted his energy on healing anyone but himself.

"Dammit, Cas," Dean muttered.

"You're welcome," Cas growled into the hollow between Dean's shoulders.

He withdrew his hand from Dean's boxers, but Dean caught his wrist before Cas could move away. He held Castiel's hand close to his belly until Cas relaxed. When Castiel's sigh drifted against the back of Dean's neck, Dean bit down on a chuckle. He turned around so that they faced each other.

Cas looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes, his hair sticking up every which way and day-old stubble darkening his jaw. With the shadows under his eyes and his lips cracked from the sea salt, he still looked beat. But his face was also flushed from bed warmth, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Tough bastard.

Dean wrapped his hand around the protective charm Cas wore on a cord and tugged gently. "Still with me, huh?"

Cas snorted. "It would seem so."

Twisting the charm's cord around his finger, Dean leaned over and kissed Cas, nipping at the angel's bottom lip before easing his tongue into Castiel's mouth. Tasting salt. Tasting rain. Giving back as good as he got, Cas tightened his arm around Dean's waist and pulled him up against his chest.

Skin on skin, god, yes.

Dean let go off Castiel’s necklace to grab his shoulder, a fistful of his hair, the nape of his neck. Their legs tangled, the sheet twisting tight around them until Cas kicked it off.

When Dean stopped for air, he put his thumb to Castiel's mouth and kept his lips parted. Shuddering, Cas put a hand behind Dean's head. His fingers dug into Dean's hair and every shaky breath he exhaled brushed against Dean's mouth.

Dean swallowed. He'd felt like a cursed man for so long, but today he didn't. He felt lucky. Grateful, because Cas was still here. A good thing had happened to them. A _good_ thing. Heart in his throat, Dean placed a kiss on Castiel's brow and his closed eyelids.

It was ironic but watching Cas almost die had kicked something lose inside him. All the tension that had been winding him up over the last few weeks had come to a head and snapped with a bang when Cas had drawn his first breath outside of the water.

Dean bit his lip, brushed his nose over Castiel's forehead before he bent down to lick at the seam of Castiel's mouth and kiss him again and again. That Cas let him do this…it was still a miracle. Never would be otherwise.

"Is this make-up sex?" Cas muttered.

Dean snorted. "Make-up sex, we-fucking-survived sex, take your pick." He hesitated, caught Castiel's gaze. "You okay with this?"

"Mmh."

Dean arched a brow, and Castiel ran his hand through Dean's hair, dragging his thumb across Dean's temple with such gentleness it made Dean's pulse quiver low in his belly.

"You and me, Cas," Dean whispered.

Castiel frowned but didn't ask what Dean meant, just took Dean's face in both hands and pulled him down for another kiss. Dean closed his eyes, feeling the trapped bird beat of Castiel's heart against his chest. Missouri was right. They didn't have time to dick around.

Voices drifted up from the common room and a radio played downstairs. The scent of toast suffused the air, strong enough that Dean tasted crispy bread when Cas kissed him, fucking his mouth with his tongue slow and good.

So good.

Castiel shoved his thigh between Dean's legs and pressed his hands into Dean's back, allowing not so much as a hair's breadth of distance between them. Stuttering out a heavy breath, Dean rubbed his crotch against Castiel's thigh and closed his eyes.

"Get those off," Cas murmured, and tugged at the waistband of Dean's boxers.

Dean stripped quickly while Castiel's hand stayed on his ass, thumb stroking over the curve of one cheek, blunt fingernails scraping at the skin. Jesus.

Dean pressed his forehead against Castiel's and shoved his hand into Castiel's briefs. The second his fingers closed around Castiel's warm, hard cock, Cas shivered and gasped. Stroking Cas with slow twists of his hand, Dean tongued at his chin, bit at Castiel's jaw. His knuckles brushed against his own dick and he shuffled closer, heat building behind his balls.

Dean raised his hand to Castiel's mouth, let Cas suck at his fingers before he went back to jerking him off. Shivers ran up and down Dean's spine as Castiel's hand kneaded his butt, his fingertips digging into muscle. He was hooking his leg behind Castiel's calf when Castiel's finger pushed into his ass, first one digit, then two; and oh Christ, _oh Jesus_.

Dean's hand clenched around Castiel's dick, and the angel's hips snapped forward, sudden and sharp. Dean's pulse sped up, his first instinct still to pull away. But Cas moved his fingers slowly, and Dean hooked his leg over Castiel's thigh instead so he could moved with him, just a little, just as slow and, God, should it feel like _this_?

Castiel fisted his hand into Dean's hair, tugging painfully. "Dean."

"Yeah," Dean huffed. "Tell me wh—"

Cas didn't waste time asking questions. He rolled them over in the blink of an eye, put Dean flat on his back and sunk down into the bracket of Dean's legs.

That worked. Man, that worked.

Dean strained against Castiel's crushing weight, relishing the feel of bare skin sliding against his, the sharp angles of Castiel's body moving under his palms. With a haste that wasn't like him, Cas shoved off his briefs, and Dean stretched out for him, arms over his head. Threading the fingers of his left hand with Dean's, Castiel braced his other hand on the mattress, rocked their bodies together and put pressure where they both needed it.

Dean slammed his head back against the pillow and arched his back, reaching down to clutch at Castiel's hip. By then Cas looked wrecked in a totally different way, with his mouth open and a blush spreading from his chest to his face, holding Dean's gaze with those freakishly blue eyes that Dean had goddamn dreams about.

Cas lost control for him, just for him. Ah, the things Dean wanted to do to him, the things he wished Cas would do to him in turn. He smoothed his hand down the small of Castiel's back, imagined Cas hooking his legs over his shoulders to get his dick into Dean's ass, the way his hips would shove and roll just like this.

Dean groaned and didn't care if the whole hostel heard him. Jesus, did he ever not care. Laughter bubbled up in his belly, but the rapid rise and fall of his chest choked off all sound. Throwing caution to the wind was liberating. More than that, it felt right. All the times he'd kept Cas at arms-length, he'd felt the wrong size for his own skin. But now? Stretching out in the sun with Cas braced above him, every muscle in his body humming with pleasure? This was easy. This was _him_ , the simple abandon more true to his nature than repression.

Dean squeezed Castiel's hand, bucked up his hips and messed up Castiel's rhythm just to see the angel smile. Cas leaned down, and Dean didn't know if he'd ever kissed Cas when he was smiling but it felt awesome, the gentle curve of his mouth, the lightness of it.

This, right here. He didn't need anything else. Tomorrow didn't matter.

Someone laughed out on the porch and Cas sped up his thrusts, grinding their cocks together, his lean body stretching and pushing, his breath stuttering from his mouth. Dean rubbed up against him, so caught up in the back and forth he didn't notice Cas had let go of his hand until Cas eased one finger back into his ass and teased his thumb over a spot just behind Dean's balls. Dean came before his brain had caught up, muscles jumping in his belly and a grunt punched from his gut. Above him, Cas flicked his tongue out to wet his lips, his gaze fastened on Dean's face.

Reaching between them to get both their dicks in hand, Dean surged up, letting Cas fuck his fist with a choked off whine. He rubbed his thumb over Castiel's stubbled jaw before he bent his head to lick along the handprint on Castiel's chest, sucking on the raised flesh until Cas squeezed his eyes shut. Two tugs on his dick, and Cas opened his mouth on a soundless cry, spilling over Dean's fingers.

With Castiel leaning on his knees for balance, Dean eased back onto the bed and stroked his hand around his softening dick.

"Fuck," he breathed, his heart knocking around inside his ribs. Cas collapsed half on top of him, and Dean folded his arms around him, pulled him close, and buried his face in the curve of Castiel's neck.

_You and me._

Once they'd caught their breath, Cas settled down next to Dean. Not ready to let him go far, Dean hooked his arm around Castiel's neck, and Cas rested his head on Dean's shoulder.

The heat in the room was thick as mist now, but Dean didn't mind. He looked down at his angel, tracking the sprawl of his limbs and the long lines of his body. Cas had tanned a little, his skin darkened to a milky coffee shade, and hot damn, were those freckles?

Fascinated, Dean trailed his fingertips over Castiel's naked shoulder. The radio still played downstairs and someone sung along, crooning snatches of the chorus. Dean laughed.

"That guy Felix told me this story," he said. "About a pair of lovebirds going at it like bunnies in a backpackers' hostel in 'Nam."

"Felix," Cas said. "He listened to them?" He smoothed his hand over Dean's leg and settled it on the inside of his thigh. Dean hummed at the warm weight of the touch and tilted his leg against Castiel's hip, comfortable to just lie there.

"Couldn't help it with the thin walls and all. Whole hostel did." Dean grinned. "Show was over, they all applauded. Standing ovations and catcalls, the little shits."

"Awkward?" Cas asked.

"Totally."

Cas closed his eyes and relaxed against Dean's side like the cat who got the cream. "I'm sure we could get standing ovations if we tried."

Dean chuckled, amused down to his bones, and for the first time in a long time not afraid of anything.

_Commercial Airfield, Paraty_

Dean looked at Paraty's miniature airstrip and had a vision of private jets crashing into the surrounding palm trees. Why he had to get on a plane for the second time in a week he would never understand.

Harper had managed to get them onto a charter flight to Santiago de Chile, and from there they would be catching another private charter to Hanga Roa, the main town on Easter Island. He'd promised the charter pilot wouldn't ask any questions.

"You're going to travel with a German tour group," Harper had said. "Good cover."

Dean still thought they could've stolen a car, but Sam insisted driving would take too long.

The sun sat high in the sky, burning down at a balmy seventy-five degrees, enough to make Dean sweat inside his t-shirt. He'd put on sunglasses and so had Cas, looking like Maverick with the charter plane behind him. They stood at the edge of the airfield, the German tourists a.k.a. _their cover_ waiting in the shadow of the airport's only hangar.

Sam stood a few yards apart from them, cellphone at his ear as he talked to Mira. He carried the sword in a billiard cue case like an old school Mafiosi. Dean had the rest of their weapons in his bag, an assortment of guns, machetes and knives, courtesy of Harper.

Full of misgiving, Dean watched the tiny prop plane that would take them to Chile. If it didn't choke out along the way.

"All good?" Cas asked, looking at him from behind his dark glasses.

Dean huffed a laugh. "All good."

Cas smiled, small tilt to his mouth, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans and flip-flops on his feet. Dean watched him even when Cas turned his head to the airfield again.

Yeah, they were walking into the mouth of the beast, Dean thought. Maybe they always would be. It didn't drive him crazy like it used to, though. He was still nervous, felt a quiver like bees buzzing in his belly, but otherwise he felt quiet, satisfied. In the right place, at the right time, heart brimful with hope or something close. Might be fragile, might be temporary. But for now it held.

 _It is simple_ , he'd once told Cas, and now more than ever he knew it was true.

Up on the airfield, a tug tractor rolled a stair to the side of the plane. The chatter at Dean's back announced the tourists walking up to the take-off strip. A shrimp of a kid, maybe nine years old, zipped past Cas onto the tarmac, headed for the plane in a beeline and drenching everything in his path with water from a squirt gun. The father chased after him, bumping into Castiel's shoulder in his hurry.

" _'Tschuldigung_."

Cas, caught off guard, stumbled against Dean. He still hadn't recharged in full otherwise the guy would have never been able to move him. A woman shouted the kid's name, and suddenly Dean and Cas were surrounded by people. Cas stood close enough their shoulders touched, and Dean took Castiel's hand, keeping him close and steady.

" _Warten sie bitte hier_ ," the German tour guide said. " _Es geht gleich los_."

The father returned, carrying the wayward kid on his hip. Someone laughed, the mother scolded the child, and the guide seemed to make a joke. Dean threaded his fingers with Castiel's, heart bumping hard in his chest and not giving a damn if anyone saw them.

  



End file.
